On This Day (2 April 1988) Sunderland Get Championship Campaign Back On Track – Just!

The fallout from the York game seven days prior had been wide-ranging. Sections of Sunderland’s supporters had – rightly in many cases – been heavily criticised by the press, authorities and fellow supporters for the pitch invasions and scenes at Bootham Crescent after the controversial 2-1 defeat. And in some respects, it deflected attention from Denis Smith, who’d threatened to walk away from the club in the aftermath of the reverse to his former employers, due to some of the criticism he was receiving.

Sunderland’s form hadn’t been great at this crucial part of the season – 2 wins from 10, and 1 in the last 7 wasn’t the form of a team storming their way to the title – but the club still remained in an automatic promotion spot, and remained firmly focused on the task in hand as the team took another away trip, this time to relegation-threatened Grimsby’s Blundell Park. Before the game, John MacPhail – who had probably more lower-division experience that anyone else in the playing squad – issued a rallying call to his teammates, and the supporters, too. Most of our team haven’t played in these sort of games before, when sides are battling for all they’re worth to keep out of Division Four, but I have and I know how tough they can be.

We need six points from Grimsby and Chesterfield [who Sunderland were playing two days later, on Easter Monday]. and although we’ve been stuttering a bit lately, I think we’ll get them. Everyone is disapoined that we’re not bubbling like we did earlier in the season, and the last thing we need is to become nervous when we’ve come this far.

The way decisions have gone against us is unbelievable. Bad luck seems to be following us around, but I think it just needs a couple of quick wins to put everything right. Smith gave new signing Colin Pascoe his first start, after a goalscoring debut from the bench the previous week at York – Pascoe came in for fellow debutant Doug Maguire; the on-loan Celtic man failing to impress at Bootham Crescent.