by Lee Howey
The ball had pinballed, bounced and bobbled off a number of players around our penalty area before Jimmy Carter accidentally kicked it against Kevin Ball. It then ricocheted off Mel three feet away and somehow landed inside the corner of the box at the feet of Carter (with Paul Bracewell optimistically raising his hands to appeal for something or other). Carter then toe-poked a hopeful shot which I almost blocked, and that would have been comfortably wide of the far post had it not struck Griffiths and rolled, with painful slowness, towards the net.
The ball seemed reluctant to go in, as if it somehow knew it was assisting in a crime. To complete the agony, a casual observer might have thought that Mel, who was having a personal nightmare, had tried successfully to get out of the way of the ball in the nick of time, rather than attempting to clear it. He got his feet confused and stepped over it instead of jabbing it away somewhere. It was an extraordinary goal; cruel and sickening. However, it proved to be the prelude for the turning point in our season, which came extremely late in the game.
The Pompey fans were whistling, the sky was pitch dark and if someone had put the kettle on it wouldn’t have boiled before we were back in the dressing room. Nightclub barmaids were leaving home for work. It was that late.
Gareth Hall played a long ball which Phil Gray chased with Robbie Pethick down the left and forced a corner at the Fratton End. Had Pethick got his foot further around the ball, it might have only been a throw-in and altered history. The butterfly effect. Steve Agnew sprinted to take the corner. Aggers would usually raise one or both arms in the way that corner takers often do. In my experience this signifies sod all. The opposition may see arms raised and think that they are about to deal with some cunning, elaborate, scientifically formulated goal scoring idea, when in reality there is no plan other than to ping the ball in and miss the first defender. The arm raising is all cobblers and anyway, on this occasion Aggers didn’t even have the time to lift his arms. He could barely lift his legs either.
Everyone except our goalkeeper was in the penalty area (these days he would be there too). It is rare in these circumstances to see any sort of space to run into, but this was an exception. I told myself that if the ball should arc into the right-hand side of the six-yard line, then I would have it. Steve’s corner was beautiful and destined for exactly where I wanted it. I ran from the edge of the area, rose above everyone and from eight yards out headed it firmly into the far corner of the net. Alan Knight was in goal for Pompey and had no chance. There was no defender on either post. That was their problem. Gettin.
Peter Reid later said: ‘That was a crucial goal. Without a doubt.’
Steve Agnew: ‘For me the turning point was the away game at Portsmouth. I scored first and I honestly thought we were going to win. But they scored twice and it looked as though we were going to lose when Lee Howey popped up with an injury-time equaliser.’
Geoff Storey, of the Sunderland Echo: ‘Howey came to the rescue with an injury-time equaliser. The draw was to have a startling effect on the rest of the season.’
Various others expressed the same opinion. So what was so damned important about that goal, when at the time it had no perceived value other than to rescue a point when it looked as though Portsmouth would burgle all three? We had only won one game in the eleven league and cup fixtures since the Millwall match. On the evening of 17 February 1996, a draw at Portsmouth did not seem to have done much to arrest this slump. History would disprove this. But why?
Well, to begin with, anyone involved with football – players, managers and fans – will tell you that a draw is considerably better than a defeat, especially when you have equalised and even more so when it comes late in the game. This isn’t just because one point is obviously preferable to none. The difference it makes to morale is huge. We took the confidence from the dying-seconds draw at Portsmouth and became virtually invincible for the remainder of the season.
We won the next nine games on the bounce and went unbeaten in eighteen. When we finally did lose it was in the last game of the season and we had already been given our Division One championship medals. Portsmouth triggered it all.
Cynics will be keen to undermine all this by alluding to our immediate relegation from the Premier League the following season. Sunderland became the definitive ‘yo-yo club’ between 1996 and 2007, when there would be four promotions and three relegations. But at least they had become a yo-yo club, something that hadn’t looked at all likely before Peter Reid’s arrival. The club had not been automatically promoted to the top flight since 1980. There had been a very fortunate promotion in 1990 when a highly convoluted set of circumstances saw Sunderland finish sixth, lose the play-off final, yet still be promoted. But that good fortune came to nothing – not even yo-yo years. The up-and-down seasons after 1996 ended with promotion under Roy Keane in 2007 and an unbroken decade in the top flight (although relegation was finally inflicted again in 2017 and the yo-yoing recommenced).
In the twenty-one seasons to elapse between 1996 and this book going to print, the club would spend sixteen of them in the Premier League, a statistic I sincerely hope will improve further. This plays a vital role in raising the profile of an economically struggling city. The shipyards and mines are long dead, so the city of Sunderland has but two banners to wave to the rest of the world – Nissan and football. Warts and all, the last couple of decades have unquestionably been an improvement on the two before and this quiet revolution can be traced back to that goal at Fratton Park on a cold February afternoon many years ago. It’s all down to me and no one else deserves any credit. None of the above would have occurred without my header. The same goes for the Good Friday Agreement, the rise of the internet and the Arab Spring. I’m dead important, I am. They should have given me a medal. Come to think of it, they did give me a medal.
Perhaps I have overstated things a little. Let’s just say it’s a good job it went in.
CHAPTER 10
WE DIDN’T WANT THE SEASON TO END
I have omitted to mention two significant new faces in Sunderland’s first team squad. I have done so deliberately, to polish them under the table, as it were. It would be wrong to say that their emergence coincided with our long, unbeaten run. Their performances were fundamental to that run – not coincidental.
The first of the two was goalkeeper Shay Given. Outside Wearside, it has been largely forgotten that Shay even played for Sunderland, but Peter Reid more or less invented him. Just two months after his debut for us, he won the first of his 134 Republic of Ireland caps (second only to Robbie Keane). That is not to say that Shay owes the club anything, because in return for his big break of seventeen games for us, he was quite sensational. An overused adjective in football, but in this case perfectly appropriate.
He was still only nineteen when he arrived on loan from Blackburn Rovers in January 1996. Blackburn were Premier League champions and one of the richest clubs in the country. Shay couldn’t get near their starting XI, where England’s Tim Flowers was automatic choice and Bobby Mimms, a fixture on their subs’ bench, was vastly experienced. By contrast, Shay’s first team experience consisted of four games at Swindon Town the previous August, where he conceded just one goal. This was impressive, but still not a massive recommendation to a club in our position. However, Peter Reid was undeterred and, somewhat brutally for Alec Chamberlain, put Shay straight into the first team for a televised game away to Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City. This was five days after our defeat to Manchester United. We had been pushed down to eighth position and were clearly wobbling. Leicester were fifth.
I was a substitute at Leicester and as such, one of my duties was to warm up the goalkeeper before kick-off. This consisted of delivering some crosses for Shay to practise on, but mainly pelting as many shots at him as time would allow. There was no point in taking it easy on the youngster, so I smashed the ball at him from all angles and distances and every shot, about fifty of them, was accurate. They were in all four corners of the goal, ben
ders, spinners, follow-ups when he was already on the ground. I really was walloping them too and under no pressure. He saved virtually every one of them. It was only a warm-up, but it was a stunning display nevertheless – and I was the only person to take a shred of notice.
I returned to the changing room, sweating and slightly in shock. I told the lads quite bluntly: ‘He’s fucking brilliant. He’s the best goalkeeper I’ve ever seen.’ I was not joking or even exaggerating. Shay went on to pull off a succession of excellent saves that day and keep a clean sheet, the first of a dozen in his seventeen appearances. He was a huge part of our success, not just because of his own ability, but also because knowing that a keeper of such calibre is behind them instils a great deal of confidence in defenders. Alec Chamberlain was good. Shay Given was world class.
He was a fine lad too with good Irish banter, gregarious, keen to fit in and glad of the opportunity to play. The only fault that anyone ever found with him was his distribution of the ball. Other than that – what a find! From his perspective, in only four months he would come from nowhere to trousering a First Division championship medal and playing international football. In 2011 he was given an FA Cup winners medal when he sat on Manchester City’s bench at Wembley while they beat Stoke. Unless you count this (bearing in mind he didn’t play at all in City’s cup run), his time at Sunderland provided the only winner’s medal he would ever receive. This seems quite remarkable, perhaps even a little unfair, given his immense natural gifts.
Sunderland tried to sign him permanently during the close season, but Blackburn, at that time dripping with Jack Walker’s multi-millions, were simply uninterested in selling their best young players. They did elbow Bobby Mimms away to Crystal Palace and make Shay a substitute in his place. However, he would only make two appearances for Rovers before signing for some other club where he proceeded to waste twelve years of his life. Shame.
• • •
As I mentioned earlier, Leicester was another goalless draw and largely unmemorable – apart from Shay. However, there are one or two other recollections I have. First there was the pounding excitement of the home fans when eighteen-year-old Emile Heskey replaced Julian Joachim (‘Bruno-ooh! Bruno-ooh!’). Gareth Hall was harshly sent off after a second yellow for a foul on Heskey (centre-back Colin Hill could clearly be seen on camera complaining about the dismissal – and he was playing for Leicester).
But on a personal level, there was some infuriating unpleasantness when I came on for Craig Russell for the final half-hour. For legal reasons I am restricted in what I can say here. I had dished it out as a player at all levels of the game. I was therefore in no position to complain when ‘it’ was returned with interest. Football is a physical, competitive environment, a macho culture, and personal dislikes are a natural consequence of this. However, some things are just too despicable to ever be acceptable and one of these things happened after I had been accused of diving – something I never did (maybe I should have).
Consensus among footballers is that they would prefer to be kicked than spat at. It is beneath contempt.
I wanted to remove the teeth and vital organs of the person who did this to me, the only player who ever would (although Millwall supporters had spat at me in the past for no particular reason, other than to confirm that evolution isn’t over yet). Steve Agnew, who had signed for us from Leicester and knew the spitter, managed with some help from Richard Ord to prevent any bloodshed.
The Filbert Street gobber denies it to this day. I can’t name him because I can’t prove it, although I can tell the reader, categorically, unequivocally, one hundred per cent, on my children’s lives, emphatically and with complete certainty, that I was spat at in the face. And it was appalling; a truly revolting thing to do to an opposition player – or any other human being for that matter. The legal issue is that proving someone has done something is not the same as knowing for a fact that he did it. The burden of proof in a libel case is with the defendant. The person suing does not have to prove that the incident did not happen.
Would our spitter be mean and petty enough to take me to court if I named him in the allegation, even though he knows it to be true? We will never know. But as we are dealing here with someone with no compunction about hockling in the face of an opponent, it’s safest to assume that meanness and pettiness are two of his confirmed traits. So while he is alive I can’t name him with guaranteed impunity. Shame.
• • •
The second young debutant to make a significant contribution in the latter half of 1995–96 had first come to my attention in preseason training; the skinny kid I mentioned in the previous chapter.
He was a physically unpromising-looking specimen and appeared to have been constructed from pipe cleaners. On the third or fourth day of training, this bony little chap, still a few weeks short of his seventeenth birthday, received a pass during a practice match. He allowed the ball to run through his spindly legs, casually knocked it past one defender, lobbed it over another before blamming an arrow-straight shot right into Alec Chamberlain’s top corner. It was a barely believable goal.
With this sublime display of raw talent, Michael Bridges had announced himself to the rest of an open-mouthed squad. What a player he was. It’s frustrating now to think what he might have done but for some bad injuries a few years down the line. I am convinced that at the very least he would have played for England. He was still developing physically when he initially broke into Sunderland’s first team; I don’t think he had even reached his full height and was about nine stone dripping wet. It would be several years before he was allowed out in a high wind. He made his debut as a substitute in the home fixture against Port Vale. It may have finished goalless, but Michael prevented the game from being entirely boring by making an instant impression with the fans, who recognised natural talent when they saw it. He was wonderfully skilful, with his touch, movement off the ball and ability to effortlessly beat an opponent. He had it all. Peter Reid and Bobby Saxton loved him and so did the crowd.
There was a story after I left Sunderland about Michael starting to earn big money and buying himself a flash car when he was still very young. It seems that Paul Bracewell instructed him to sell it and replace it with something more modest. The coaching staff were keen to keep Michael’s feet on the ground. There are two sides to this. I understand what Paul was trying to do, but don’t think this was necessary, especially in the case of a young man who was a dedicated professional and is a nice bloke to this day. His parents saw to that.
• • •
The first of our nine consecutive wins following the draw at Portsmouth came at home to Ipswich Town on a freezing February evening. The pitch was like a billiard table, by which I mean that it was green but as hard as slate. It was barely playable. Some old mates were in their squad: Mick Stockwell, Simon Milton and Neil Gregory. They also had Tony Mowbray, Richard Wright in goal, Claus Thomsen, Mauricio Tarrico, Stuart Slater and Steve Sedgley. John Wark was back at Ipswich then for his third stint, but didn’t feature that day as he had been given permission to go and celebrate his 150th birthday.
The absence of Escape To Victory stars notwithstanding, this was a technically very good side. Had they been more physical they would have finished higher than their eventual seventh. They were by far the better side that night and we could barely get the ball off them. They ought to have bagged the three points, making chance upon chance. But they became the latest side to discover how good Shay Given was. The main source of injustice came in the thirty-eighth minute when Bracewell wellied up a hopeful one; I outjumped Sedgley to head the ball on to Craig Russell who was thereby through on goal and jabbed the ball past Wright.
That, somewhat implausibly, was the only goal of the game. A game that Ipswich should have won about 6–2. There was justifiable disbelief among the visiting players after the match, incredulous that they had lost. We were incredulous that we had won. My heart went out to my old club – in between guffaws. They had do
ne something similar to us at Portman Road. Luck? We took our one chance while they fluffed all of theirs, which was a bad idea on their part if you ask me.
All wins boost the confidence of a side, but this one boosted us more in a slightly unorthodox way. If we could play so atrociously and still win, then we could do anything. I personally didn’t have too bad a game, but it wasn’t a good team display.
Four days later we were little better at home to Lennie Lawrence’s Luton Town, upon a blustery afternoon on a dusty Roker Park pitch. I don’t think we mustered a shot at goal that day. We didn’t need to. Coincidentally, it was in the thirty-eighth minute again when I nudged the ball left to Craig, who then placed it wide to Micky Gray. Micky aimed his cross towards me at the back post, but it was cut out by Luton’s makeshift centre-back, Julian James – and buried into his own goal before a joyous Fulwell End. Sorry if you’re reading this, Julian, but it really was a beauty. The own goal was greeted with a cruel but amusing chorus of ‘Sign him on! Sign him on!’
Again we hadn’t played well as a team and this time neither had I personally. Again it was 1–0 at the final whistle. Again, therefore, we didn’t care and neither did the fans. Again we all just thought: ‘Roll on the next game.’
Roll on it did. Our next victory was even more farcical and came three days later against Southend United at Roots Hall. We flew to Essex in a little chartered plane; the first time I had ever flown to a match. It was rather misty when we arrived at the ground, but the rule was that there only needed to be visibility across the width of the pitch, as well as from each goal to the halfway line. So the referee, Graham Barber, said the match should go ahead. From our own penalty area we couldn’t see the opposition’s goal, but overall visibility was still just within regulations. At least it was when we kicked off. Whether it was fog or sea fret was of little interest outside the meteorological community. What concerned us was that in airborne waves it was encasing us in increasing thickness.
