Lord Rowell of Seaham was born on this day in 1957. He joined Sunderland AFC as an apprentice in 1972 before turning professional in July 1974. He made his league debut for the Lads in the 1975/76 season, helping us to promotion from the old Second Division into the top flight. He scored 102 goals for us in total, in 266 appearances, surpassing the previous post-war record set by Len Shackleton of 101 goals. Gary’s record stood until Kevin Phillips in turn beat it in the 21st century.
He was extremely talented, and I think most people thought he’d go on to win full England caps. Unfortunately, his career was severely disrupted by a serious knee injury that he sustained in 1979. Following a lengthy recovery, he continued to score goals in the top flight at a healthy rate – but he was always likely to struggle to maintain full fitness throughout any one season. Goodness knows what his ceiling would have been if he hadn’t missed so many games.
I am lucky enough (old enough) to have seen him play many times. One can hardly discuss Gary Rowell without mentioning his hat-trick in the 4 – 1 victory over the Visitors at St James’ Park. For any player to achieve that is quite something – for a local Sunderland lad to do that was quite astonishing.
I was in amongst the foe during that game. Sensible enough to sit on my hands! What an afternoon. What self-control was shown by yours truly!
That one game was probably the reason our current away blue kit is so iconic. In an interview after the game, he claimed that after the fourth goal, he had a conversation with Kevin Arnott, wondering whether they should go for a fifth goal or just take the piss! They decided to just take the piss!
I remember he scored another memorable hat-trick at Roker against Arsenal in the 1982/83 season.
He began to blossom in 1977/78 with 18 goals in 38 appearances. This was bettered the following season with 21 goals in 31 games. A few months later came that awful medial ligament injury, which ended his season. In truth, he never quite fired on all four cylinders again.
In 1979/80 he was restricted to just eight starts. He did play regularly during the next four seasons in the top flight – with his contributions adding greatly to Sunderland trying to establish themselves as a solid force. He was the club’s top goalscorer for six seasons.
He joins only two other post-war players to have scored over 100 goals for the Black Cats – the other two being Len Shackleton and Kevin Phillips (although there were another seven pre-war centurions).
In an interview from 1981, he talked about seeing no reason why Sunderland AFC couldn’t become a real force in the First Division, and establish themselves in the top ten and beyond. It seems that that has been a goal for our club for the entirety of my life!
When he eventually left Sunderland for Norwich City in 1984, injuries restricted him to just six appearances and one goal for the Canaries. He was an injured Norwich player for the 1985 League Cup Final. It came to be known as the ‘Friendly Final’ because of the way our fans reacted to getting beat and still applauding Norwich – possibly (or probably) because Gary Rowell was there.
Although I didn’t see this happen myself, some report that Rowell went over to the Sunderland fans with the trophy held aloft, in a very emotional scene.
After playing a handful of games for ‘Boro, Brighton, Carlisle and Burnley, he hung up his very much golden boots. He went on to become a financial consultant and then a radio pundit.
He is one of Sunderland’s most loved, celebrated and revered strikers, more recently honoured on the new Legends’ Way. He was an intelligent player, with great awareness, precision and a smooth, balanced, athletic style – and, of course, lethal in front of goal.
He died of leukemia in December 2015. Such a sad loss, still strongly felt by us all.
He would only have been 69 today. Rest in peace.
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