One of the most important games I played in was against Everton. It was a cup replay in 1935. We played Everton four times that season and three of the games produced 25 goals! We were top of the league until Christmas Day when we went to Goodison Park and got well beaten 6-2 but we went back to the top when we hammered Everton 7-0 at Roker Park the following day. It was normal in those days to play on Christmas Day and Boxing Day and it was usual to have two games against the same team at Christmas or Easter.

I had scored three goals in those two games and a week or two later I got a hat trick against Fulham in the FA Cup and who should we be drawn against in the next round but Everton at Roker Park. It wasn’t a very good game, it was a stop start kind of game with lots of free kicks and it finished 1-1.

The replay at Goodison Park was the following Wednesday afternoon. There was a big crowd with plenty of Sunderland supporters there because special trains had been laid on. It turned out to be a great game. It’s a game that they raved over for years on Merseyside. They beat us 6-4 after extra time. There had been some trouble in the first game so they changed the referee for the replay, a fellow called Eddie Pinkston. The referee was so strict that this time the players just got on with playing football. It was a wonderful place because Everton were by far the biggest team in Liverpool in those days.

I scored the equaliser with an overhead kick in the last couple of minutes of normal time to make it 3-3 and take the match into extra time. I remember Patsy Gallacher missed a sitter that would have made it 5-4 to us. That was the only time that we would have been in front but they came at us and got two simple goals to win the game.

We used to have lots of high scoring games but this was a great game because of the quality of the football as well as the fact that there were ten goals. Everton kept the same team as in the first game but we had brought in Alex Hall instead of Harold Shaw at left back. If anything we made the better start, Jimmy Connor was a wonderful left winger and he put over a couple of great early crosses but just as we looked like getting on top it was their left winger Jackie Coulter who hooked in a shot that beat Jimmy Thorpe in our goal.

A few minutes later I thought I’d equalised with a header but Ted Sagar pulled off a reaction save that pushed the ball out for a corner. Although the match ended up with ten goals, both goalkeepers actually made some great saves on the day but it was such a fast open game with both teams playing well that there were goalmouth incidents from start to finish.

We pushed hard for an equaliser, I remember Jimmy Connor hitting the bar, I got to the rebound first but could only throw myself at it and knock it forward off my chest and Ted Sagar just got to it on the line.  We were putting Everton under pressure but we got hit on the break when Coulter made it 2-0.

Being two goals behind wasn’t the sort of thing to put us off. We’d come back from two goals down before but when Raich Carter had a shot cleared off the line we were starting to think it wasn’t going to be our day but Bert Davis managed to score for us before half time and at half time we were sure we could go on and win.

We pushed hard for an equaliser in the second half, I got round the goalkeeper once only for their left back Jack Jones (who signed for Sunderland after the war) to get back and clear, then we should have had a penalty when their centre half Tommy Gee handballed in the penalty box but the referee didn’t see it. We’d had nearly all of the second half although to give credit to Everton they had defended well but then with just about quarter of an hour left they made it 3-1 when Alex Stephenson scored.

Whenever that happens you have to get a goal back straight away and we did that when Jimmy Connor scored after playing a one-two with me. It’s amazing to think that Dixie Dean didn’t score in a game where there were ten goals but he would have done if Jimmy Thorpe hadn’t made a wonderful save from him in the last few minutes. There were only a couple of minutes left when we managed to get the equaliser we deserved. I used to score all sorts of goals that people said were ‘impossible’ goals. I scored from some very narrow angles and with unorthodox shots and this one was an overhead kick that must have caught Ted Sagar by surprise to make it 3-3.

There were four more goals in extra time but sadly from our point of view three of them were for Everton. Jackie Coulter completed his hat trick pretty much straight after extra time got started so having been behind in the game for so long we were behind again just after getting back to all square. Jimmy Connor made it 4-4 with a first time shot but Everton’s right winger Albert Geldard scored twice late on to make it 6-4 in a game where eight of the goals had been scored by wingers and not one had been a header.

Obviously it’s nicer to think of games that we won and we won some important games when I was at Sunderland but as a game of football that match at Everton would take some beating.

I was at Sunderland from 1925 until I retired after the war.  I’ve got memories of going to Roker Park in 1925.  The pitch is the same as when I first went there but the surrounds and the stands have completely changed. There was an old wooden stand or grandstand. I can remember going down there to report for training at the beginning of July 1925 and there was just a little, narrow wooden door. Billy Williams the trainer would stand outside.

You had to report at half past nine and Billy Williams would meet the players coming in. You went through the narrow doorway, turned left down a passage and as you went down the passage was the visiting team’s dressing room on the left and then further down the passage was the home team’s dressing room which was bigger. It included a bath and a slipper bath. There was a treatment table in the middle of the room.

When you had to come out, the visitors had to come down the narrow passage towards the home team dressing room and then you went up three wooden steps and then there were some steps down and out onto the pitch. The people who stood in the enclosure could turn around and shake hands with the directors. I can not tell you where the directors went for a cup of tea at half time but they certainly had nothing like what they’ve got now.

The secretary/manager was Bob Kyle, his place was at the bottom of the ground. When you came around the corner of Roker Baths Road around the Roker End and up towards the main entrance, that’s where the secretary’s office was. It was a big wooden hut. They had a billiards table in there with seats around. The players had to go in there after Thursday afternoon training for when word came through about the team. They usually had a Board meeting to pick the first team and the second team.

The office boy would come in with the team sheet and pin it up so that everyone could see whether they were in the first team or the second team. If the first team were going away for a Saturday game they’d usually meet up at the Central Station on the Friday. The Reserves had to report to Roker Park and if they were away they would get a coach from there.

The old wooden stand ran more or less the length of the pitch. I believe it was pulled down in 1929 as soon as the season finished because they had to get the new one built for the start of the 29-30 season. It wasn’t quite ready when we reported back for training and we had to go to Chiswicks football field next to Redby School to do our training.  The old Clock Stand was an old wooden stand. It was smaller than the main stand but it had seats with standing at the front.

I was in and out of the first team from about 1926 until around 1929-30 when Davie Halliday, the first team centre forward was transferred to Arsenal and I came into the team.

My first competitive game at Roker Park was against Hartlepools United reserves. We won 14-0 and I scored nine goals.  It used to cost about sixpence to watch the reserves and you got a lot of people coming to watch the reserves because we had a good reserve side. If I remember rightly between 1925 to 1928 we won the North East League three years in succession. I remember a midweek reserve game at Roker Park where we won 9-1 and our outside left Billy Death scored seven.  I can remember him cutting in from the wing at the Roker End, running along the by line and hitting a ferocious shot which the goalkeeper jumped out of the road of as it might have hurt him. He really had a ferocious shot!

In those days you always played a practise game between the reserves and the first team at Roker Park a week or two before the start of the season. I always remember playing for the reserves and leading the first team 4-1! We got stuck into them but eventually they beat us 5-4. 

Davie Halliday was signed about a fortnight before me. I got into the first team as inside left towards the back end of the 25-26 season. My first game was against West Ham in London. We lost 3-2 but I played alongside Davie Halliday and scored my first league goal.

My home debut was against Arsenal. It was the first time Charlie Buchan had been back to Sunderland since his transfer. I believe Charlie Parker was our centre half that day. That was the first time Charlie Buchan was booed at Roker Park because he fouled Charlie. I scored the two goals and we won 2-1. Davie Halliday and the Arsenal goalkeeper were ordered off and it was very rare to get sent off back then.

I played in a lot of great games, some we lost but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. We won the Cup Final at Wembley when we beat Preston 3-1 in 1937 but I can’t say that was the best game I ever played in. One of the big occasions I played in was the day Sunderland had their record attendance.

We played in a 4-4 game against Derby County at Derby.  We were winning 4-3 when a ball was played up to me. There was only me up at the centre line. In those days the centre forward always stayed up. Their right back was Tommy Cooper, an England international who later went to Arsenal. There was only a few minutes to go and I always remember saying to myself shall I hold it or try and beat him? What I did though was to kick it as far as I could towards the corner flag. That was my mistake because nearly all of their players were nearer our goal and there was a big clearance which came to Dally Duncan, their left winger, who beat Bill Murray and put a hard ball over from which they equalised. That really stands out in my memory because I knew I should have held the ball.

When we had the replay the following Wednesday, we had stayed at the Roker Hotel and as we walked along to Roker Park it was choc-a-bloc. There was over 75,000 there, it was Roker Park’s record attendance and it was estimated there were several thousand more who couldn’t get in. The ground was packed and spectators were up to the touchline. Whenever there was a corner kick and the taker wanted to get onto the cinder track to take a few steps to kick the ball he had to try and get the crowd to make way for him.

I remember chasing a through ball in the first half with their centre half Jack Barker. He was just slightly behind me and as it happened I just stood on the ball and a fraction of a second later he hit me. I was travelling fast and as I fell I instinctively put my arm out to break my fall but in doing so I damaged my shoulder. I had my arm put in a sling and as there were no substitutes in those days I went on to play on the right wing with the winger going to centre forward. The match went to extra time but they got a simple goal and beat us one to nothing.

There are a few games that stand out for me. In the Championship year of 1936 at Easter time I remember we needed four points to win the League. There were only two points for a win then and we beat Birmingham 2-1 at Roker Park on Good Friday and then travelled straight to the railway station to travel to Bolton for a game the following day but we got beat 2-1.

The following week we travelled to Birmingham to play the return game on Easter Monday and we beat them 7-2. I scored four of the goals and I probably could have scored another two or three. The forward line was Davis, Carter, myself, Hornby who played instead of Gallacher and Jimmy Connor was on the left wing. To a certain extent it was a wonderful game of football from a Sunderland point of view. It was very one sided but it gave us players great satisfaction because we clinched the league. We stayed in the New Street Station that night celebrating. We lost games after that but we knew nobody could catch us.

The 7-2 championship winning game with Birmingham was a great day but there was only one team in the game but in the Everton cup tie there were definitely two teams in it and it was a great game. Both teams played well and there were ten goals scored through good football.

We finished runners up in the league to Arsenal that year. We beat them at home and drew away in front of Highbury’s record attendance. Arsenal won the League Championship three years in succession. They’d won the FA Cup and the Charity Shield as well. In 1935 Arsenal had a Championship dinner and as the runners up we were invited down as we were on our way to Spain to play three games. The next year in 1936 we took the Championship off them. We had a great game with them at Roker Park where we beat them 5-4. We were beating them 4-1 at half time, they came back to 4-3 and then we got another one to go 5-3 up before they came back to 5-4.  In the November of 1936 we took the Charity Shield off them as well and then in 1937 we won the English Cup! The Cup Final in 1937 wasn’t a good game from a spectator’s point of view, it was more the feeling afterwards when we’d won.

When we won the Championship we scored 109 goals but the defence let in about eighty.  We used to play hell with them! We used to say ‘What’s the use of us  scoring goals if you lot are letting them in?’ but they’d just say ‘You’ll have to make up for it’ Carter and I had over 60 between us and Patsy Gallacher got nineteen.  Raich Carter and Patsy Gallacher were great inside forwards. Patsy Gallacher was a very good worker off the ball. He was two footed. Raich was very good with both feet and with his body swerve.

Sometimes we read in the papers about someone scoring something like his seventh goal of the season and we’ll think ‘We used to score that many in one game!’  I once scored five in a game against Liverpool and another time we went there one Easter Saturday and beat them 6-0, I scored four of them that day. I should’ve scored five again but I slid in one and put it over the bar. I still don’t know how I didn’t score.

I scored some impossible goals. My equaliser in the 1937 FA Cup semi final went through six players. I shoved a ball to Carter and ran for a return and when it came to me I just hit it and it went in. you always need a bit of luck. Sometimes people said I missed the easy ones and scored the impossible ones. The one I scored in the Cup Final was a freak. We got a corner. I always used to go and stand in front of the goalkeeper to stop him getting a good view of the corner kick. Eddie Burbanks hit this corner towards the penalty spot where all the players were. The Preston goalkeeper was Micky Burns who used to play for Newcastle. I moved out and how Raich Carter got above everyone to head the ball on I don’t know but it came straight to me. Billy Tremelling was the centre half should have been covering me but he was in amongst the players challenging for the ball so I managed to divert it. All Micky Burns had to do was react, he was two yards off the line and I was on the six yards line. George Harrison was commentating and he said I was offside but Andy Beattie was full back for Preston and he played me on. Really all I did was deflect Carter’s ball.

As well as winning the League Championship, The FA Cup and the Charity Shield with Sunderland I had the pleasure of playing for England. I played for ‘The Rest’ against England at Roker Park in 1934. Raich Carter was picked for ‘The Rest’ and I was reserve. George Camsell of Middlesbrough was picked for the England team and a fellow called Milson of Bolton Wanderers was selected for ‘‘The Rest’. Camsell had to cry off so Milson moved into the England team and as Reserve I came into ‘The Rest’ team.  Our forward line that day was Stanley Matthews, Raich Carter, myself, I think it was Ray Westwood of Bolton Wanderers and Eric Bribb of Manchester City. We beat the England team 7-1. Raich Carter scored four goals, I scored two and Eric Bribb scored the other one.  It was through that game that Raich Carter was selected. 

Newcastle United’s wing half Sammy Weaver was on our side and he said to me “You should be selected” but I wasn’t. The next year though I was selected and Raich Carter was reserve for an England game against Scotland at Hampden Park.  Scotland had some very good players in those days.

I went down to Roker Park on Monday – which was pay day – when word came through that I’d been selected to play for England the next Saturday. I got my instructions through the post on a card which had printed on it the time I had to report on the Friday night at a certain hotel in Troon and what you had to bring which was boots and shinpads. You got your shirt, pants and stockings given to you.

A lot of people think I only played for England once but I played twice because I played in a full international where you got a cap and I played against Scotland at Hampden Park in the week before the season started to play in what was called the King George’s Jubilee Trust Fund Game. All the gate money went to King George’s charity and instead of getting a cap we got a silver Scottish Loving Cup.  The papers still say I only played once for England but I played twice. The first game they beat us 2-0 and in the King George game we lost 4-2 but I had the pleasure of scoring one of England’s two goals with a header.

I had missed out on an international cap when I played for a schoolboy team. Back then you could leave school the day after you were fourteen. My 14^th birthday was in October and I was in the running for a schoolboy international cap. I’d had to go to York for a schoolboy trial match, my father always travelled with me. They only played me in the second half and we heard afterwards that the schoolteachers had gone away at half time to pick the team and they never saw me play. My father had paid his own expenses and having a bit of a fiery temper at times he withdrew me from school as I was over fourteen.

I went to work as we needed the money. Shortly afterwards word came through from the schoolboy associations that I had been picked after all to play at Newcastle United’s ground but by then I’d left so I couldn’t represent the schoolboy team.

I played for Hetton Juniors. We had a great winger called Sammy Gibbon who was a County cricketer and a good footballer. Somebody wrote in the paper about me. I was scoring a lot of goals, thirteen in one match was my best against Fence Houses YMCA.

Bishop Auckland wanted to sign me. My ambition was to get out of the pit and become a full time professional footballer. I went straight into Bishop Auckland’s first team at sixteen. There were six full amateur internationals in the team. All grown men. I never won the amateur cup with Bishop Auckland but they were a wonderful team. I played against an amateur team from Sheffield but I had a neck injury and shouldn’t have played and we lost 2-1. I scored about 17 goals in the season for Bishop Auckland but I missed quite a bit of the season through injury. They wanted me to stay for another season but I signed for Sunderland.

Whilst I was playing for Bishops there were two workmen electrocuted at Eppleton  Colliery. There was a benefit match for widows and orphans between Bishop Auckland and a select team from Sunderland, Newcastle United and Middlesbrough. The outside left for the select team was old Stan Seymour who was finishing his career. I scored two goals and I must have played well because Sunderland’s old chief scout Bob Wood saw me and he haunted Hetton Juniors and Bishop Auckland. I was playing for Bishop Auckland but would come back and play important games for Hetton Juniors as well.

I was playing so much for Bishop Auckland and Hetton Juniors that I only got to Roker Park to watch Sunderland on odd days that were few and far between. I always used to go in the Fulwell End with my father because in those days a lot of supporters had their own spots in the ground. I always remember one day in my early schooldays that I was in the wooden stand against a barrier and a crush fell forward and broke the posts of the barrier. Fortunately I wasn’t hurt but that was the sort of thing that happened.

My father would never let me sign for Sunderland until he got a promise from them that they’d look after me. I was only young and some days the trainer at Sunderland, Billy Williams, would let me have a day off when the other players were training. I was only slim and about ten stone then and I didn’t need the amount of training some of the older players needed.

I had a good career but I broke my leg twice. The first time was in the week before my 20^th birthday playing for the reserves against Workington. I was chasing a through ball in the first minute. The goalkeeper came out and we collided. I didn’t feel anything at first but after a few seconds the pain came.  Fortunately it was only a simple fracture. It was the fibula that was broken. I got carried off into the Workington dressing room and laid on a wooden table. The doctor looked at me and said it was a severe bruise but I told him it wasn’t. I wasn’t taken to hospital.

We always travelled in a special railway coach to matches at Carlisle and Workington. I had no crutches and was only bandaged so they had to carry me back to the train. We had to change trains at Newcastle and at the station they put me on a little bogey that rattled along the station. When we got back to Sunderland I had to get a taxi to take me to where I lived at Silksworth. The injury was reported to the club doctor who lived along Stockton Road and he came up to see me on the Sunday. I had it X-Rayed and I ended up in a nursing home near Christ Church. I was in there for about four or five weeks with my leg in a plaster cast although I was allowed to go home on crutches. I always remember though that I had to spend my 20^th birthday in the nursing home

I played my first game back early in January for the Reserves at Scotswood and I got into trouble from the trainer and the assistant manager for running about too much. They said ‘you’ve just recovered from a broken leg”. I was quite fit though and I was alright.

The second time I broke it was in a fifth round, second cup replay against Blackburn Rovers at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground. I never played again after that. I went through for a through ball, pushed my foot out to push the ball past the goalkeeper, who was Billy Barrow, and I turned my ankle. It caused a hairline crack so it wasn’t as bad as the other one but I got carried off. The club doctor was there and he couldn’t find anything so it got bandaged up by the trainer.

The manager Johnny Cochrane came in. Johnny at that time was on his last legs at Roker Park and I thought well he’s the manager and the team have an important cup game on. He was talking to me about going back on and scoring the winning goal to be the hero. He went to have a wash and when he did I tried to stand up but as soon as I put my foot down there was terrific pain and I couldn’t do it. If I remember rightly we lost to a goal from a corner a couple of minutes from the end of extra time.

They whipped me back to Monkwearmouth Hospital where they X Rayed it and they saw the crack of a hairline fracture. They didn’t bother to put it in a plaster cast because the bandaging was firmly fixed. I was in Monkwearmouth hospital for about four weeks. While I was in there I was one of the first people to know that Johnny Cochrane had been sacked. He came in on the Thursday morning to see me and told me he’d been sacked.

I was the only player in the cup winning team that he hadn’t signed. When he first came he tried to get rid of all the players who were Bob Kyle’s players. To him I was a Bob Kyle player. Johnny Cochrane came to Roker Park in 1928 after the last match of the season against Middlesbrough when Middlesbrough only had to draw and Sunderland had to win to avoid relegation. I was down to play inside left. It was the season when I’d broken my leg but I’d came back. We were taken away for a week’s special training at Saltburn before the Middlesbrough match. The trainer Billy Williams took me down onto the beach to try me out. It was such an important game and I was still a youngster really and I was 100% keen to play but he wouldn’t report that I was fit to play so that day Sunderland played two outside lefts, Billy Death and Len Hargreaves. Billy Death played inside left and it turned out to be his last ever game for Sunderland. George Robinson played his first game that day at outside right and Sunderland won three nothing. Davie Halliday was still there and scored but if I’d been fit I’d have played at inside left. In those days if you weren’t playing so well you had to stay on. It wasn’t like now where they can replace you so if you were going to play you had to be right. I had quite a few injuries where if it had been like it is now I would have come off.

I was never ordered off and I only got reported once. We were playing Middlesbrough and we lost 6-0, Carter and Davis were sent off. Hastings, Johnson and I got reported. We were down to nine men and I chased a ball out to the right wing, we had no right winger as he’d been ordered off so I raced over and tried to hook a ball over my head to try and keep it in play not to harm anybody but with all the trouble just before that the referee thought I’d deliberately kicked the ball into the stand. I had to go to a committee meeting at Darlington. I told them I didn’t do it deliberately and I got let off so I have a clear record although I can understand the referee’s point of view.

We used to train by running on the beach. Billy Dunlop the assistant trainer would take us for a brisk walk from Roker Park down to the sea front and along to Whitburn cricket ground. When I was a boy we had some of the old stagers in, people like Albert McInroy,  Warney Cresswell, Arthur Andrews and Ernie England. They’d fall behind and catch a tram up to Whitburn without Billy Dunlop seeing them. They were the crafty ones, the experienced ones. I was nicknamed ‘Boy Gurney’ and they were men to me, some of them were married and I was the youngest then but I stayed at Sunderland for a long time and after the war I worked on the coaching staff.

I came out of the forces in 1946. I was due two thirds of a benefit because in my days you got a benefit after five years if you were good enough. You had to play so many first team games to collect a £615 benefit. You didn’t have benefit matches, the club just gave you the money. I’d already had two and was on the way to my third one when the war came.

When I went back to Roker Park after the war the directors made Bill Murray the manager put me on the training staff. I used to look after the third team. They had a fellow called George Gray looked after the first team. I was only there for about one season. In my opinion Billy Murray didn’t want me there. I kept asking for a benefit. But the manager had to make an application to the Football League for one. He kept putting it off but eventually it came through and I got my two thirds share of a benefit.

As soon as I got that I finished but I was doing some coaching for the Durham County FA going around schools. Horden Colliery Welfare came in for me and I went to Horden for three years in the North-Eastern League. Whilst I was with Horden, Peterborough United got in touch with me and I went down there in 1950 for two years. It was before they were in the Football League. A lot of Sunderland people had gone to work in Peterborough.

After that Darlington were interested in me and I always wanted to get back into League football so I went to Darlington in 1952 and stayed there until 1957.  We never had to apply for re-election but of course there was no money and we had to sign rejects on free transfers. I took a full back on a free transfer from Sunderland called Cliff Mason. He was a lad that belonged in York, did well for me and got transferred to Sheffield United for £6,000. We had poor gates so we never had much money. Darlington said they wanted to finish me at a time when I had a year and a half left of a two year contract. They paid me compensation. I did a bit of scouting for Leeds afterwards, managed Horden again for a couple of years and then had a spell as Hartlepools manager until the start of 1964.

I’ve always supported Sunderland and I still support them. I’m a member of the Senior Supporters’ Club. I still go to matches now and then. I know they can’t give every former player tickets, there’s such a lot of them. I’m always given a ticket if I ask for one but I hate asking.

There’s two points about Sunderland moving from Roker Park. As far as I’m concerned I would rather they didn’t because all of my career at Sunderland was at Roker Park and I’ve a lot of happy memories. I grew up with Roker Park and I’ve seen it change. I was there when we won the League, the Cup and the Charity Shield but for people getting there it’s too enclosed. All the people come from a two thirds area, there’s nobody comes from the sea is there? The majority of big clubs are more inland but Sunderland is on the coast and it can cause congestion on matchdays. The streets round-a-bout Roker Park were not built for the numbers of travelling supporters who come to games now. To the old die-hards who have gone there year after year it is a big wrench to think of leaving.

It’s money now that they all think about. The amount of money the players get is ridiculous but you’ve got to move with the times. If the directors at Roker Park have got the money to move to a new ground then they should build it but the older supporters have memories from Roker, some good and some bad. Sunderland have been in existence for over 100 years. What did people think in the 1890s when they moved grounds?  I imagine that a lot of people who regularly went to the ground at Newcastle Road didn’t want to move to Roker Park but you’ve got to move with the times. If Sunderland are going to exist then they’ve got to move from Roker Park, if they want to be what I call a superteam they’ve got to have super facilities rather than patching Roker Park up.

The Roker Roar was famous. When you were playing at Sunderland you were concentrating on the game but in the background you could hear a roar, a continuous roar like no other ground. That was the Roker Roar.  99% of your brain would be focussed on the football but that other 1% was always conscious of the roar. If I went near the touchline I’d hear odd comments such as, ‘Gurney why don’t you move up?’ but in the main it was just a general roar that could be deafening.

Hardly any supporters were able to travel to away games in the thirties but in our cup winning year of 1937 we had a sixth round second replay against Wolves at Sheffield Wednesday and there were hordes of Sunderland supporters there. It was only after the war when transport started to improve and people began to have more money that you started to get regular away supporters. I’m a local lad, I broke my leg twice, I won vital games for them and I always tried.