50 Years of Love: My Sunderland Valentine’s Day Origin Story

Stoke-on-Trent, 14 February 1976: while most of the country exchanged cards and chocolates, a nine-year-old boy in the Potteries received a very different kind of Valentine. Standing among 41,176 spectators at Stoke City’s old Victoria Ground for an FA Cup fifth-round tie, he was captivated not by the home side but by the cacophony of red-and-white devotion booming from the away terrace. That distant, swaying mass of Sunderland supporters—singing, chanting, willing their team on—etched itself so deeply into his imagination that, half a century later, he still counts the day as the moment lifelong love affair began.

“I can’t remember a single kick of the match,” the now 59-year-old admits, “but I can still feel the vibration of those songs and the colour of that crowd.” The game itself finished 0-0; Stoke’s biggest gate of the season could not separate the sides. Yet for the youngster, neutrality was no longer an option. Within weeks he was scouring the sports-final editions of evening papers for Sunderland’s results, compiling scrapbooks and badgering his parents for lifts to Midlands and north-west fixtures whenever the Lads were within reach.

His schoolmates, steeped in Liverpool and Manchester United allegiances, found the new allegiance baffling. “Mackem” became an affectionate playground curiosity, but the boy embraced the outsider status. The obsession even provided ballast during turbulent formative years: “Football, and Sunderland in particular, became my coping mechanism,” he reflects. “The players were my heroes; I’d imitate Kerr’s passing or Robson’s movement for hours against the garden wall.”

The romance was duly rewarded. A replay at Roker Park the following Wednesday drew 47,583 fans and ended 2-1 to Sunderland, propelling them into a quarter-final against Crystal Palace. Though Palace would prevail 1-0 before the last-ever 50,000-plus crowd at the old ground, the die had been cast for one devoted nine-year-old now celebrating 50 years of unbroken loyalty.

From that first Valentine’s encounter to countless away ends up and down the country, the spark first glimpsed across a divided terrace still burns: a reminder that football’s greatest gift is not silverware but the enduring emotional tether between a club and a supporter who, once smitten, can never quite let go.