“The only way we’ll truly enjoy it is if we get to Wembley and go and win it.”
Lee Cattermole and Jack Ross agree: Wembley is a reward for Sunderland fans - but only if they win, we all knew it anyway. But Ross was speaking from bitter experience.
Sunday’s Football League Trophy final against Portsmouth will only be the second time in his 42 years that Sunderland’s manager has been to Wembley – the first since it was remodelled.
Lee Cattermole and Jack Ross agree: Wembley is a reward for Sunderland fans - but only if they win
Barely a Press conference goes by without the Scot making reference to being a fan of the game as well as a professional. You can only imagine how wide-eyed Ross was just short of his 20th birthday to be at football’s most famous stadium to watch his country take on the Auld Enemy at a European Championships. When it comes up in the conversation, it is greeted with sarcastic thanks for stirring up the memory.
“I was there with my dad and my dad’s brother, who stays in the Swindon/Bath area,” he recalls of his day out at Euro 96. “It was actually a good game despite the outcome.”
But that was the problem. The outcome.
England were leading through Alan Shearer’s headed goal when a foul on Gordon Durie presented Scotland with a penalty. David Seaman saved from Gary McAllister, the Three Lions got the ball down the other end to Paul Gascoigne and the rest was history, with one of Wembley’s greatest goals securing a 2-0 win.
“If you go as a neutral, I was at the Champions League final at Hampden (Park in 2002) when (Zinedine) Zidane scored his volley against (Bayer) Leverkusen,” Ross says. “That was dead easy, I enjoyed that, it was great because I was neither here nor there about who won, it was just about enjoying going to the Champions League final and watching it.
“But if you go with an affinity to either club you only really enjoy it if you win. You might have had a good day out but it takes a bit off it.
“I probably went there rather naively thinking it would be a throwback to the 70s where Scotland dominated the stadium but I think the excitement created by the Euros being held in England and the way the team was performing at the time, that’s when the fanbase was reinvigorated so there were only little pockets of Scots, with the exception of the Scottish end, which I wasn’t in.
“You can imagine my celebration when we win a penalty and what happens in the 60 or 90 seconds after that when Gary misses and Gazza scores at the other end.
“It was a stadium I always wanted to go to and I enjoyed it as a fan but it’s changed a lot since that occasion and I’ve not been back in it since then.
“It was fine being in with the England fans and it was dead easy for them to watch us miss a penalty, then go up the other end and score. There’s not a lot you can do but take your medicine.”
Ross will not be the only one with bad memories of Wembley. Their FA Cup wins of 1937 and 1973 were before many supporters were born, whereas the 1992 FA Cup final, 1998 Championship play-off final and 2014 League Cup final will be fresher in the mind.
History, though, will count for nothing. Sunderland will be about making new memories – for Ross as well as the fans.
