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Sunderland Football Club was established in October 1879. Their founder was a Scot, a schoolteacher and graduate of the University of Glasgow by the name of James Allan. Allan, who had been teaching at Hendon Board School, formed the team with some of his colleagues and originally named their side Sunderland and District Teachers’ Association Football Club. After a year, however, the doors were opened to people from outside the teaching profession, and the name of the club was changed to Sunderland AFC.

The newly formed club played their first games at the Blue House Field at Hendon and spent two years there before moving to Ashbrooke, and then, after a similar time period, on to Roker and Fulwell. In 1886, they moved to Newcastle Road, a ground that boasted grandstands around its perimeter and which could hold 15,000 patrons.

Two years earlier, in 1884, Sunderland AFC had won their first trophy, the Durham Senior Cup, after an impressive 7-2 victory over Aston Villa, one of the teams who would go on to become one of the founder members of the Football League in 1888. Sunderland were themselves elected to the Football League in 1890 and, in only their second season in the highest echelon of English Football, were crowned champions, a feat they would repeat the following season and again in 1895 and 1902. This was a Football League made up of unfamiliar names such as Newton Heath (who later became Manchester United), Woolwich Arsenal (later Arsenal) and Ardwick (Manchester City). By now, Sunderland had taken up residence at Roker Park, a ground that was officially opened on 10 September 1898 when the home side christened their new abode with a 1-0 win over Liverpool.

The rich vein of success the club enjoyed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was to be short-lived, however. After a splendid season under manager Robert Kyle in 1913, when they won their fifth First Division title – amassing a record fifty-four points in the process – and were runners-up to Aston Villa in the FA Cup, it would take another twenty-three years, at the end of the 1935/36 season, before the championship trophy found its way back to Wearside. The following season, Sunderland, now under the guidance of Jimmy Cochrane, added to their roll of honour when they celebrated their maiden FA Cup victory, defeating Preston North End by three goals to one in the 1937 final thanks to goals from Bobby Gurney, Horatio ‘Raich’ Carter and Eddie Burbanks.

Sunderland never really got close to the top honours again after that triumph, although they were narrowly pipped to the title in the 1949/50 season, finishing third, a mere point behind champions Portsmouth. The club reached the last four of the FA Cup in 1938, 1955 and 1956, but their star was on the wane and, having flirted with relegation in 1956/57, when they finished twentieth, Sunderland were demoted for the first time in their history at the end of the 1957/58 season after they finished second bottom of the league and were relegated on goal difference along with Sheffield Wednesday.

They remained in the wilderness of Division Two for six seasons before gaining promotion back to the top flight under the management of Alan Brown in 1963/64, finishing as runners-up behind Leeds United. But after achieving promotion, Brown left to join Sheffield Wednesday and former Scotland manager Ian McColl took over the reins.

McColl, an excellent wing-half in the fêted Rangers side of the forties and fifties, had taken charge of Scotland in April 1961 and had enjoyed just over four successful years at the helm in what was an excellent era for the Scottish national side. Despite making a less than auspicious start – he lost his first match 9-3 to England at Wembley – he masterminded two revenge victories over the Auld Enemy in 1962 and 1963, with the 2-1 win at Wembley in 1963 still remembered with great fondness north of the border today. His remit at Roker Park was first to keep Sunderland in the top division and then to push them back into contention for the long-overdue silverware. He failed to deliver, though, and despite signing the supremely talented Jim Baxter from Rangers, he could do nothing other than stave off relegation for the three years he was in charge. McColl left the club in 1968, at which point Alan Brown was tempted back for a second spell at the helm. Brown kept Sunderland in the First Division until the end of the 1960s, but they bowed to the inevitable in 1969/70 and suffered the depression of relegation once again.

It was during this second spell as a Second Division club that Sunderland enjoyed arguably their greatest hour-and-a-half. In 1973, they became the first club outside the top division to win the FA Cup since the Second World War. En route to Wembley, the Wearsiders saw off Notts County, Reading, Manchester City, Luton Town and Arsenal to set up a date with Don Revie’s Leeds United in the end-of-season showpiece.

Now managed by Bob Stokoe, Sunderland, up against one of the most revered club sides of that era, were massive underdogs. The Yorkshire side, boasting the likes of Peter Lorimer and Billy Bremner in their ranks, were in the midst of a particularly fruitful period in their history, having won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup – the predecessor to the UEFA Cup – in 1967/68, before going on to collect the First Division title the following season, and they were the current holders of the FA Cup, having defeated Arsenal 1-0 in the 1971/72 final at Wembley. And Revie’s side seemed certain to retain the trophy against a Sunderland side that had only managed to finish sixth in Division Two, but in a match that has gone down in the annals as one of the greatest shocks of all time, an inspired display by goalkeeper Jimmy Montgomery plus a goal from Ian Porterfield were enough to take the trophy back to the North East.

The FA Cup win granted Sunderland passage into European football for the first time in the club’s history the following season and they acquitted themselves well in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup, defeating Hungarian side Vasas Budapest 3-0 on aggregate in the opening round before succumbing to top Portuguese outfit Sporting Lisbon in round two.

This successful period stretched in to the mid-seventies, and Sunderland enjoyed a brief flirtation with the First Division after they won the Second Division title in 1975/76, but their return to the top flight lasted only one season. Their yo-yo like league fortunes continued for the remainder of the seventies, but in 1979/80, under manager Ken Knighton, they were promoted once again after finishing as Division Two runners-up behind Jock Wallace’s Leicester City.

Although the Sunderland team that Ally McCoist joined ahead of the 1981/82 season was still resident in the First Division, they were still struggling at the wrong end of the table and battling valiantly to steer clear of relegation. The previous season, 1980/81, the Wearsiders had finished seventeenth in the league, only three points clear of the drop zone, and Knighton had parted company with the club four games from the end of the campaign. Mick Docherty took over in a caretaker capacity and had managed to guide the club to safety, although it took a final-day victory over Liverpool at Anfield to preserve Sunderland’s First Division status, with Stan Cummins netting the all important goal in a 1-0 win over the European Cup winners.

Despite his side’s last-day heroics, Docherty did not manage to secure the job on a permanent basis. He became reserve-team coach instead, and in that role he would become a great source of support for McCoist when the youngster struggled to adapt to the English game.

The Sunderland board chose to appoint Alan Durban, capped twenty-seven times for Wales and a First Division championship winner with Derby County during his playing days, as manager and he immediately indicated his intent to place more of an accent on youth development. Eighteen-year-old Ally McCoist was one of his first signings and Durban had high hopes for his new acquisition. He told the members of the press corps gathered to witness the unveiling of, in the opinion of The Times, ‘the most wanted man in Scotland’¹: ‘I am just pleased that he has selected Sunderland not because of the money we have offered him, but because of the future he sees in the club. He is one of the best prospects to come out of Scotland in a long time and I hope he turns out to be another Kenny Dalglish or Steve Archibald.’

Unfortunately, McCoist failed to live up to Durban’s billing. Despite his tender age, the large transfer fee shelled out to secure his services – he had just become the most expensive purchase in Sunderland’s 102-year history – and the huge expectation of the Roker Park faithful placed a huge burden on the young Scot. And he had next to no time to settle in, either.

Having been signed and paraded in front of the media on Wednesday, 26 August, he was thrust into action immediately, making his debut as a substitute when he replaced Alan Brown in Sunderland’s opening league match, a visit to play Ipswich Town at Portman Road, only three days later. It was a tough baptism for McCoist, as Bobby Robson’s men had enjoyed a splendid 1980/81 season, finishing as runners-up in the First Division and winning the UEFA Cup after defeating AZ Alkmaar of Holland in the two-leg final. In their ranks they boasted England’s central defensive pairing of Terry Butcher and Russell Osman, and it was Butcher who ‘welcomed’ McCoist to the First Division when he dished out a bone-jarring but fair challenge shortly after Sunderland’s new arrival had been introduced to the fray. But if the challenge rattled McCoist, it certainly did not show: he and his team-mates took the game to Ipswich and shot into a 3-1 lead, with the new boy setting up one of Sunderland’s goals shortly after coming on. The home side did manage to claw the deficit back and the game ended 3-3, but Sunderland continued their impressive start to the new campaign when they entertained champions Aston Villa the following midweek and promptly sent them back to Birmingham with no points thanks to a 2-1 win. Given the fact that they had taken four points from a possible six against two of the top sides in the league, positive noises were beginning to emanate from Wearside that the mixture of youth and experience Durban had fused together were about to mount a realistic push for the championship.

McCoist settled in well on Wearside. He moved into digs that had been provided by the club along with another eighteen-year-old called John Cook, and he and McCoist struck up an immediate friendship. McCoist would later acknowledge that it was Cook who encouraged and stimulated his liking for playing practical jokes on his team-mates. McCoist also befriended Barry Venison, a player who would later go on to turn out for Liverpool under Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness and who would sit alongside McCoist as a pundit on ITV. The settling-in period was also aided by the fact that Sunderland boasted something of a Scottish colony at that time, with the faces of Iain Munro, Tam Ritchie, and Gordon Chisholm also featuring in the first-team picture.

Partnering McCoist in attack in those early days was Sunderland’s chief predator, Gary Rowell. A local boy who had been raised in Seaham, Rowell was a dyed-in-the-wool Sunderland fan, who had realised his dreams of pulling on the red-and-white jersey in the promotion season of 1975/76. He was soon in among the goals, netting eighteen times in 1977/78, and then on twenty-one occasions the following season, with his collection from 1978/79 including a hat-trick in an unforgettable 4-1 win over bitter rivals Newcastle United at St James’ Park, a sure-fire way to win a place in the hearts of the Sunderland followers. He had been hampered by a knee ligament injury during Sunderland’s promotion charge in 1979/80, but was a regular feature in the team throughout 1980/81, a season in which he set about establishing himself as one of the most feared marksman in the First Division, scoring ten goals. Rowell’s goal-scoring performances earned him recognition at England Under-21 level and like so many other strikers McCoist played alongside when his career was in its infancy, Rowell played his part in the young Scot’s footballing education by teaching the young upstart that sometimes it was better to take a moment to place his shot rather than haphazardly blasting the ball towards goal.

Sadly, the initial optimism that engulfed the North East in the wake of the opening two league fixtures soon subsided. Sunderland lost their third match of the season, going down 2-0 at home to newly promoted West Ham United, and the result was the precursor for a miserable run of form that saw the Wearsiders fail to win any of their next eleven league matches. Instead of ascending the league ladder, Sunderland were slithering in the opposite direction and when they lost 2-0 to Tottenham Hotspur at Roker Park in mid-October, they fell to the bottom of the pile. Further heavy home defeats at the hands of Liverpool (0-2) and Manchester United (1-5) threatened to leave them marooned.

The club’s big-money summer signing was hardly blazing a trail, either. McCoist was now a full-time professional – having given up the job he had held in the Overseas Development Office in East Kilbride – but he found the transition difficult during that first season on Wearside. After his relatively successful debut against Ipswich, McCoist made two further substitute outings before Durban gave him his first appearance in the starting eleven against Arsenal at Roker Park in September. He then became a regular fixture in the side, but he incurred the wrath of his new manager in late October when a series of unfortunate events saw him dropped from the side for the first time.

Sunderland had been drawn against Second Division Rotherham United in the second round of the League Cup, and had comfortably won the first leg 2-0 at Roker Park, with Gary Rowell and Tam Ritchie on the scoresheet. The weekend before the second leg, on 27 October, McCoist had returned home to Scotland to visit his parents with a view to travelling back to Sunderland on the day of the game in order to catch the team coach bound for Rotherham. However, a double dose of car trouble meant he arrived at Roker Park too late and missed the bus, so as the first team headed to Millmoor, McCoist was ordered to stay behind and turn out for the reserves in a match against Mansfield Town instead.

While two goals from Tam Ritchie helped Sunderland’s top team to a 3-3 draw against Rotherham and a 5-3 aggregate win, McCoist racked up all four of Sunderland’s goals in his second-string run-out against a hapless Mansfield side. However, any hopes Sunderland may have harboured of an extended cup run to help alleviate their Division One blues were extinguished in the very next round when Crystal Palace, a team who had not registered a win on their travels in the Second Division for almost twenty months, came to Roker Park and won 1-0 thanks to a goal from their Scottish skipper Jim Cannon.

Although McCoist’s free-scoring performance for the second team had gone some way to restoring his confidence, goals in the First Division were proving a little harder to come by. In fairness, McCoist was not alone. Goal-scoring was proving a real problem on Wearside in the early months of the 1981/82 season, with Sunderland only managing to score seven times in their opening fourteen league matches, and in that run they had gone eight games without finding the net.

McCoist eventually chalked up his first goal for the Wearside club on his fifteenth league appearance, netting after seventy-eight minutes of a midweek fixture against Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest on 25 November. His goal was an important one, too. Sunderland had been 2-0 down, but goals from Rob Hindmarch and McCoist helped claw them back to level terms although a goal by the visitors in the last five minutes robbed the home side of a much-needed point.

Sunderland had managed to stop the rot in the league four days earlier when they visited Goodison Park and beat Everton 2-1, a result that marked their first league win since the triumph over Villa in September, but Durban’s men failed to build on their success, and the defeat at the hands of Forest was the first of three successive losses, all of which plunged them deeper into trouble as Christmas approached. At least they weren’t bottom of the heap over the festive period, as a 3-2 win over Manchester City at Maine Road six days before Christmas lifted Sunderland up to twenty-first place in the First Division.

This time the club managed to build on their victory, and they won their first league fixture of 1982, a morale-boosting 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Wolves. They did so without the services of their £400,000 striker, though. Having failed to add to his goal-scoring tally since notching his first goal against Nottingham Forest in November, McCoist paid the price for his profligacy by losing his place in the team. He made only two substitute appearances in Sunderland’s next five matches, but buoyed by a goal from the penalty spot against Hull City reserves on 3 February, McCoist was recalled to the first eleven to help engineer a way out of the relegation zone when the club lurched through another rocky spell in February and March.

After defeating Wolverhampton Wanderers on 30 January, Durban’s side picked up just two points in their next six league matches, but with the aid of McCoist’s second goal in English football, Sunderland managed to arrest the decline in their fortunes when they defeated high-flying Southampton 2-0 at Roker Park on 10 March. It was a spectacular goal, too; a superb curling shot from the edge of the penalty area.

That triumph was Sunderland’s first win in six games, but the writing still seemed to be on the wall with regard to relegation, particularly when they lost 2-0 at home to fellow relegation candidates Middlesbrough in early April. The result saw the North East rivals swap places in the league table, with Sunderland replacing the Ayresome Park side at the bottom of the heap with only eleven games of the season remaining.

However, just as the scribes were penning Sunderland’s First Division obituary, the listing ship was steadied and Sunderland surged to safety. After the setback against Middlesbrough, Durban freshened up his team, with McCoist once again relegated to the sidelines. After having enjoyed his longest run in the first team since his arrival in the North East, a sequence of seven successive starts, he was replaced in the side by another nineteen-year-old, Colin West, and the change certainly worked, as West found the net six times in those final eleven games as Sunderland embarked on an unbeaten run of six matches, with wins chalked up over Stoke City, Birmingham City, Everton and West Brom, coupled with two draws against Ipswich and Tottenham Hotspur.

They were now sixteenth in the table, and although the sequence was brought to a shuddering halt following a 6-1 defeat by Coventry City at Highfield Road, five points from their final four league games were just enough to keep them in the division, although the club and its supporters faced an anxious wait to confirm their survival. Sunderland completed their fixture list with a 1-0 win over Manchester City at Roker Park, but fellow strugglers Leeds United, lying two points behind, had a game in hand which, if they won, would mean they would stay up and Sunderland would drop into Division Two. The Wearsiders survived, though, when West Brom beat Leeds 2-0 at The Hawthorns, and the Yorkshire side bid adieu to the top flight along with Wolves and Middlesbrough, ironically two of the clubs McCoist had turned down when he had opted to sign for Sunderland nine months previously.

McCoist had undoubtedly failed to live up to expectations in his maiden season in England. His star, one that had shone so brightly and vibrantly only twelve months previously, appeared to be on the wane, a fact borne out by a paltry return of just two goals in twenty-eight league appearances during his debut campaign. This was clearly not the kind of return the Sunderland board had expected when they had signed a cheque for close to half a million pounds the previous August, and it looked likely that McCoist’s stay on Wearside was to be a short-lived one.

Matters were not helped when his personal life suffered a setback during the campaign: his parents had decided to separate and the situation merely compounded the misery McCoist was engulfed in at the time. Things were not going to plan on the park, he was homesick and, on top of everything else, this was the last thing he wanted to have to deal with. He would, however, look back in later life with regret that his own plight at that time meant that he was not more supportive and sympathetic towards his parents during what must have been an incredibly difficult period.

On the pitch, however, McCoist knew there was only one way to silence the critics: he had to get back into the team and improve his scoring return. However, it looked, for a while at least, that he would not be given that opportunity when Alan Durban made a bid to lure Gordon Strachan from the northeast of Scotland to the northeast of England. Strachan may not have been direct competition for McCoist, the flame-haired dynamo was, after all, a midfielder, but part of the proposed deal to Strachan’s current employers, Aberdeen, was to offer McCoist to the Pittodrie side as a makeweight in the transaction. The Aberdeen hierarchy had no interest in conducting business, though, and issued a hands-off warning to Durban and any other potential suitors. Strachan, who had turned in three fine performances for Scotland during their World Cup campaign in the summer, was an integral part of an Aberdeen side on the up; a side who were scrapping toe-to-toe for the major honours north of the border with the Old Firm of Rangers and Celtic and the emerging Dundee United. So Durban had to look elsewhere for new recruits and McCoist, for the time being at least, was staying put in England.

Undeterred by the pre-season rumblings in the transfer market, McCoist was determined to bounce back from that wretched first season and hand those who were suggesting he could not cut the mustard at the top level of the game a large helping of humble pie. He laid the foundations of his revival back on home soil, scoring three goals in three games against Dunfermline Athletic, Dundee and former club St Johnstone during Sunderland’s tour of Scotland.

McCoist carried the confidence he had gathered from his successful pre-season outings into the opening act of the new season, a First Division curtain-raiser against Aston Villa at Villa Park. For the second successive season, Sunderland kicked off their campaign against European champions, as Villa, one of the leading lights in the English game in the early eighties, had won the European Cup by beating Bayern Munich in Rotterdam in May. Their success on foreign soil meant that an English club’s name had been etched on Europe’s premier club trophy for the sixth year in a row.

The match on 28 August was Villa’s first competitive match at Villa Park since their European triumph, but Sunderland and McCoist spoiled their homecoming party. The Wearsiders brought Villa crashing down from their lofty pedestal by winning 3-1 thanks to goals from McCoist, Colin West and Nick Pickering.

Sunderland built on their opening-day success by drawing their next match at home to Notts County and then dumping West Ham United by one goal to nil in their third outing. They were in nosebleed territory. With seven points from a possible nine, perennial strugglers Sunderland found themselves fourth in the First Division.

Alas, it was yet another false dawn, and they were soon sinking to the bottom rather than rising to the top. Coventry were the first team to inflict defeat on Alan Durban’s side when they won 1-0 at Highfield Road and, a week later, a trip to the seaside was far from pleasant as Brighton and Hove Albion edged a five-goal thriller. Suddenly, in the space of a fortnight, Sunderland had fallen seven places to eleventh, although McCoist had at least managed to register his second goal of the season in the latter match. A third defeat on the bounce followed at home to Spurs, but if that result was difficult for the Roker regulars to stomach then it paled into insignificance when Alan Durban took his beleaguered troops to Vicarage Road to take on Watford on the 25 September.

Durban had hoped to use the match against the First Division new boys to stop the rot and bring to an end their winless run, but instead Sunderland turned in a pathetic performance and were hammered 8-0. Luther Blissett scored four times for the home side on a day when the First Division went goal crazy, with fifty goals being netted in the eleven matches played. The drubbing equalled the worst defeat in Sunderland’s history, matching the 8-0 reverse they had suffered at the hands of West Ham United in 1968. Speaking after the match, Durban gave an indication of just how poorly Sunderland had performed when he said that his side had been lucky to lose only by eight goals!

Sunderland’s players were glad to see the back of September, and their hopes of starting afresh in October were boosted when they put Norwich City to the sword at Roker Park, winning 4-1 courtesy of goals from Gary Rowell (two), McCoist and Cooke. McCoist’s goal, a powerful low drive in the sixty-ninth minute, was the start of something of a glut for him; it was the first of five goals he would score in October. He was on the mark again in the next three consecutive league matches, hitting the target in a home match against Southampton (1-1), against Manchester City at Maine Road (2-2) and against Everton at Goodison Park (1-3). He also managed to register his first goal in English Cup competitions when he scored one of Sunderland’s five goals in the second leg of the League Cup second-round tie against Wolves. It seemed as though McCoist had now adjusted to life in English football and was about to illustrate to all and sundry why the Sunderland board had paid out such a large fee for him.

Unfortunately, the team did not mirror McCoist’s change in fortune. The win over Norwich failed to herald the start of a winning run and Sunderland failed to register a victory in their next ten First Division fixtures. During that run, they lost four matches on the spin and, in the process, plunged to the bottom of the league. They also exited the League Cup when Norwich won a third-round replay by three goals to one at Carrow Road.

In an attempt to arrest the decline, Durban dipped into the transfer market and swelled the striking contingent at Roker Park when he signed one of the most gifted players English football has ever produced, Frank Worthington. Worthington was recruited from Leeds United for whom he had netted fourteen goals in thirty-two league matches. The striker, who was as famous for his off-the-park behaviour as he was for his performances on it, had been one of the cult heroes of the 1970s, scoring a wealth of goals for Huddersfield Town, Leicester City and Bolton Wanderers and winning eight caps for England. He was an excellent goalscorer (he was the top marksman in the English First Division in the 1978/79 season, with twenty-four goals for Bolton), but he had other strings to his bow, such as a superb range of passing and the ability to ghost beyond defenders with the ball at his feet.

His one shot at the big time presented itself in 1972 when Liverpool expressed an interest in signing him to spearhead their attack alongside Kevin Keegan, and a deal with his employers, Huddersfield, was ironed out and a fee of £150,000 agreed. Worthington would be joining a Liverpool side managed by the great Bill Shankly, which stood on the verge of one of the greatest eras in their history, but he was denied the opportunity to exhibit his talents on Merseyside when he failed a medical. His blood pressure was abnormally high and, after taking advice from his medical staff, Shankly pulled out of the deal, unwilling to take any risks on the player given the sum of money involved.

When he arrived at Roker Park, one of the first things Worthington noticed was that Ally McCoist had all the necessary attributes to become a great striker. Reflecting on his first impressions of the young McCoist some years later, Worthington recalled: ‘When I arrived at Sunderland I was in the twilight of my career and without a doubt saw a lot of myself as a young man in Coisty. He had this obvious talent, along with a desire and hunger to make something of his career which I had when I first started out in the game. I could see Coisty had all the ingredients to make a great player. He had a brilliant attitude to the game and loved nothing more than kicking a ball around.’²

Although he was approaching veteran status, Worthington’s skills were showing no signs of eroding and his arrival at Roker Park presented McCoist with a terrific opportunity to train and play alongside such a gifted individual, which undoubtedly helped to nurture and improve his game. In a similar manner to Gary Rowell and John Brogan before him, Frank Worthington played a significant role in shaping McCoist into a well-rounded centre-forward.

Worthington made his debut for Sunderland in a match against Ipswich at Roker Park in early December. And he made a scoring start too, notching Sunderland’s second goal during a 3-2 defeat. Although the arrival of Worthington was beneficial for McCoist’s development, the presence of another striker in the first-team pool only served to increase the pressure on him to keep delivering the goods on the park, but by the twilight of 1982, the youngster was once again stuck in the middle of a dry spell in front of goal. The October Feast had been followed very quickly by a goal-scoring famine and although he partnered Worthington in attack in the Ipswich match, a run of six games without a goal eventually cost the twenty-year-old his place in the team. He was an unused substitute when Sunderland lost 3-0 against West Bromwich Albion at The Hawthorns and by the time Arsenal visited Roker Park the week before Christmas, McCoist had dropped out of the first-team pool altogether. In his absence, Sunderland sent their followers home after the Arsenal match with a good deal of festive cheer in their hearts, with the players handing their fans an early Christmas present by thrashing the Gunners 3-0 thanks to a Gary Rowell hat-trick.

That emphatic victory brought a run of ten matches without a league win to a halt and signalled the start of a run that saw Sunderland lose only one of their next fourteen First Division matches, shooting themselves up to fifteenth in the table in the process. A defence that had been somewhat porous up until that point – shipping thirty-seven goals in only eighteen league matches – suddenly shored up, and a club record of six consecutive clean sheets was equalled as goalkeeper Chris Turner and his back-line kept the attackers of Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Notts County and Aston Villa at bay. The only disappointment in the early months of 1983 was an early exit from the FA Cup when Sunderland were eliminated by Manchester City, who won a third-round replay at Maine Road by two goals to one.

With the team settled and performing well, McCoist found it difficult to force his way back into the first-team picture, and in that fine run of results he only made four appearances, all of which came from the substitutes’ bench. He did manage to get back on the goal trail in the reserves, though, scoring against Middlesbrough, Barnsley, Bradford City and Derby County, but he was unable to reproduce that kind of goal-scoring form in his sporadic appearances in the first eleven.

However, just when it seemed as though Sunderland would escape from their annual relegation scrap and ease themselves into a mid-table comfort zone, the Wearsiders rumbled off the rails and were sucked back towards the relegation precipice. After defeating David Pleat’s Luton Town 3-1 at Kenilworth Road at the end of March, Sunderland went seven matches without a win and, following a 2-1 home loss against Birmingham City in April, Durban’s men stood only two points clear of the bottom three. McCoist made four appearances during that dire sequence, his confidence boosted by some prolific scoring in the reserve team – he netted a hat-trick against Nottingham Forest and doubles against Preston North End and Rotherham United – but yet again he failed to replicate that rich vein of goal-scoring form when elevated to the first team.

With only three matches of the season remaining and with Sunderland due to visit Highbury and welcome title-chasing Watford to the North East, many felt they were one of the favourites for relegation, but Durban managed to rally the troops and squeeze one last ounce of effort out of them. They took five points from those last three games, beating Arsenal 1-0, drawing 2-2 with Watford, and holding mid-table West Brom to a 1-1 draw at Roker Park on the final day of the campaign. That was enough to lift Sunderland to a sixteenth-place finish, three points clear of Manchester City, who were demoted to the Second Division along with Swansea City and losing FA Cup finalists Brighton & Hove Albion.

McCoist, who had only started one league game since early December, was recalled to the starting line-up for the last two league games, but he failed to add to his tally of six league goals. Despite the fact that his name had not appeared on the scoresheet since October, that total was sufficient to see McCoist finish the season as third top league goalscorer at the club behind Gary Rowell, who netted sixteen times, and Nick Pickering, who grabbed seven to finish second. All in all, it was a poor goal-scoring season for Sunderland, as they only managed to score forty-eight goals in their forty-two First Division fixtures. Only Brighton (thirty-eight), Birmingham City (forty) and Manchester City (forty-seven) had scored less.

The Sunderland players were rewarded for avoiding the drop when they were given a week-long break in Magaluf. On the vacation, McCoist shared a room with Frank Worthington and was treated to a first-hand insight into Worthington’s playboy lifestyle and love of partying. Wherever Frank went, Ally tagged along, and although shattered by the end of the seven-day session, by all accounts the youngster thoroughly enjoyed himself. ‘He [Worthington] decided to take me under his wing for the trip,’³ recalled McCoist. ‘Where he went I went, and boy did he know how to enjoy himself. But the next morning, as I tried to recover from the trauma of the night before, my room-mate had my welfare in hand. He brought me my breakfast in bed, ran me a bath and made sure I was ready for the rigours of another day in his company. Honestly, this morning ritual went on for the week we were there.’

The duo would not be teaming up again in Sunderland colours for the 1983/84 season, though. Worthington took the chance to continue his whistle-stop tour of most of the First Division clubs when he left Roker Park in June and signed for Southampton and, a few days later, McCoist was on his way, too.

His long-time admirer John Greig had just endured another wretched season in charge of Rangers. The Glasgow side had ended the campaign without a trophy and Greig was coming under increasing pressure to turn the ailing club around and restore them to what their band of followers perceived to be their rightful place at the summit of the Scottish game. He was given the dreaded vote of confidence by the Ibrox board in the summer when they voted three to one in favour of retaining him as manager, but having sold Jim Bett to Belgian side Lokeren, he had money to spend in order to strengthen his player pool and he immediately pinpointed McCoist as his top target.

Having watched him in action at various stages of the 1982/83 season, Greig approached Alan Durban and the Sunderland board to enquire about McCoist’s availability and the possibility of tempting the young, out-of-favour striker back to Scotland. The first McCoist learned of the interest from his boyhood heroes was when he had arrived for pre-season training one morning in June and the prospect of linking up with his favourite team was one that appealed to him greatly.

However, before agreeing to meet with the Rangers representatives, McCoist sought the advice of his manager, and Alan Durban advised the young striker that perhaps a change of scenery was just what he needed to reinvigorate his career. Perhaps sensing that his own time in the hot seat at Roker Park was drawing to a close and that things were about to change on Wearside, Durban urged McCoist to discuss Rangers’ proposal, as there was no guarantee his services would be required at Sunderland after the alterations had been made. Durban’s prophecy turned out to be accurate: within a year he too was seeking pastures new when, after another poor season, he was relieved of his duties and replaced by Len Ashurst.

Having witnessed such a poor return on his substantial investment, one may have expected Durban to be filled with regret over his extravagance. On the contrary, his only disappointment is that he did not get the opportunity to work with McCoist when he had matured into the fearsome striker he thought he could become many years later. In an interview for the brochure that celebrated McCoist’s career in his testimonial season, Durban stated:

He [McCoist] needs people to keep putting the ball in the box for him and we weren’t a team that could do that. Like a lot of strikers of that age, Ally relied mainly on his scoring instinct, and when that could not work for him, he did not have the knowledge of the game to be able to compensate in other ways. It was a great pity that Sunderland were not in a position to be more patient with him. Not for a moment did I regret paying St Johnstone what I did for him; not for one moment did I think that I had over-estimated his potential. At that time he had so much to learn about the game, but because of the money we paid for him, people tended to overlook that.⁴

Ian Bowyer, a two-time European Cup winner with Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest and McCoist’s Sunderland team-mate during the 1982/83 season, agrees with Durban’s sentiments:

I do not think Ally would have had the same degree of success in England that he has had in Scotland, but he would still have got his twenty to twenty-five goals a season. There were a number of problems for him at Sunderland. Apart from his inexperience, you could not in all fairness say that he was in a good team. I found it very difficult myself, and I was thirty/thirty-one then with two European Cup-winners’ medals under my belt.⁵

Thus, with his manager’s blessing, McCoist made the journey north to Carlisle to meet the Rangers management team of John Greig and Tommy McLean. In addition to breathing fresh life into his career, he knew as he journeyed up the motorway that this might well be his last chance to sign for the club he loved. It did not take long for a deal to be thrashed out, and on 8 June 1983, John Greig’s persistence ultimately paid off when Ally McCoist signed for Rangers at the second attempt for a fee of £185,000, less than half the sum Sunderland had paid for him a little under two years earlier. The passing of time would show this to be perhaps the biggest bargain buy in the history of football transfers.

Although his time with Sunderland had been blighted by patchy, inconsistent form and had not been as profitable as both parties had hoped at the outset, McCoist left Wearside with only good memories. He may have only scored a mere nine goals in sixty-five appearances, but he had struck up a rapport with the Sunderland supporters and is still thought of fondly in the North East today. Speaking on the first of three video releases chronicling his career, McCoist said: ‘I look back on my Sunderland days and people say to me that I couldn’t really have enjoyed it, but it’s crazy, I did. I met some fantastic people down there, and although I didn’t do as well as I would have liked, the Sunderland fans were fantastic with me. I think they appreciated that I was just a young kid down there trying to do my best.’⁶

In the summer of 1983, however, the door was slammed shut on the Sunderland chapter of Ally McCoist’s football career. At last he had secured his dream move and he returned to his homeland determined to prove he had the game to cut it as a striker at the top level. After his dry spell in England, McCoist intended to silence the critics by establishing himself in the Rangers team, help bring success and silverware back to Ibrox and, hopefully, in time, to elevate himself to the same legendary status that was afforded to the likes of Derek Johnstone and Colin Stein, two strikers he had worshipped during his time cheering on Rangers from the sloping Ibrox terraces in the 1970s.

Unfortunately for the twenty-year-old, he was to find that the road to the lofty perch to which he aspired would prove long and unforgiving. Indeed, within eighteen months of his arrival at Ibrox, McCoist found himself standing at a career crossroads and staring into the abyss.