The night many Sunderland fans heard the Roker Roar for the first time and our team felt like they mattered
What stands out still is the silences. After every line of every chant, the silence was complete: everybody was joining in, nobody shuffling or muttering, 26,000 people united. We’d heard the stories, of course. We knew about the Roker Roar. We thought we’d heard it – but we hadn’t, not till then, not till the night Sunderland beat Chelsea to reach the 1992 FA Cup semi-final.
The sense that something extraordinary might be happening came with a 3-2 win at West Ham in a fifth-round replay. We were second division, hopeless. Denis Smith had been sacked at Christmas and his assistant Malcolm Crosby, who looked like Robin Williams playing the wacky manager of a toy shop in an oversized prosthetic nose, took over on a caretaker basis. Then we nicked a draw at Chelsea with a late John Byrne header. None of this made any sense. We clearly weren’t any good but somehow, in the Cup, fortune seemed with us.
Written by Jonathan Wilson
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/14/my-favourite-game-sunderland-v-chelsea-1992-fa-cup-replay under the title “My favourite game: Sunderland v Chelsea, 1992 FA Cup replay | Jonathan Wilson”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
