The 2005/2006 season is one most Sunderland fans won’t want to remember too much of, given our total of just fifteen points and three wins.
By the time Fulham came to town in early April, we still hadn’t won a home game and the visitors were without an away win. Relegation wasn’t mathematically confirmed, but it was just weeks away.
The game was a chance to end a dire run of form — particularly at home. Back then, we’d see crowds of about 30,000 a week and go months without winning at the Stadium of Light — which had become a miserable sporting venue.
This was one of four home games I went to this season, and as a nine-year-old, this was probably for the best.
Heavy rain on this particular Saturday afternoon eventually turned to snow, and by the time kick off came, the stadium was experiencing blizzard conditions. Yet just hours before, it was sunny, before the weather turned quicker than most of our defenders that season — which, in fairness, wasn’t that fast.
During the build up to the match, my dad and I went to watch the players warm up. The snow was falling and starting to lie on the pitch with around an hour to go until kick off. Standing to the left of the goal at the North Stand, we spent about fifteen minutes watching our goalkeepers warm up.
Each bounce of the ball and sprawling dive was met with the squelch of cold mud. It felt like it should be the middle of winter, yet the season was only a month away from ending!
I was an aspiring goalkeeper at the time, so watching this warm-up was an education despite the dire weather.
As the warm-ups ended, Kelvin Davis must’ve spotted me watching on intently, as he unzipped his jacket and handed it over to me. I was delighted at the time — as was my dad — but then we were stuck with a waterproof jacket dripping with mud for what we thought would be a full game of football.
Kick off came, and I remember certain players looking like they were running through a swamp.
In hindsight, it’s a surprise referee Mike Riley was able to get the game underway at all, but they gave it a go for about twenty minutes and after three consultations with Sunderland caretaker boss Kevin Ball and Fulham manager Chris Coleman, he finally called it.
So many aspects of this game had “typical Sunderland” written all over it — firstly the fact that we still managed to concede during the period of the game that actually happened, and then that one player busted his nose open and was subbed off after colliding with his own player (Rory Delap walloping George McCartney).
We didn’t go down on that snowy day in April due to Birmingham’s failure to win, but the abandoned game only delayed the inevitable. It was a weird game from start to early finish, and Ball reported not being able to see across the other side of the pitch through the ice and snow showers.
As for Davis’ jacket? It’s still around at my family home, as far as I know. And yes, obviously, it’s been washed — although that’s surely knocked a few thousand pounds off the value I could’ve fetched for it on eBay? We may never know.
Tomorrow’s match will probably be very different, but it would be by simply being completed, but we’ll always have that bizarre afternoon in April 2006.