Roker Park
Encyclopedia
Roker Park was an English football
stadium situated in Roker
, Sunderland. The stadium was the home of the English football club Sunderland A.F.C.
from 1897 to 1997 before the club moved to the Stadium of Light
. Near the end of the stadium's history, its capacity was around 22,500 with only a small part of the stadium being seated. Despite this, the stadium's capacity had been higher in previous years, attracting a record crowd of 75,118.
chairman and his brother decided to build a bigger ground for the club, to replace what was then the club's current ground at Newcastle Road. The club had negotiated to buy farmland that belonged to a Mr. Tennant and part of the agreement was that Sunderland would have to build a house on the site as well as their new stadium. Until this house was built, Sunderland still had to pay rent on the land.
Within a year of the land being bought, Roker Park had been built, with the wooden stands only taking three months to build. The Clock Stand had 32 steps, no seats, and a crush barrier for safety. The turf was brought from Ireland
, and was of such a high quality that it lasted for 38 years. The pitch was designed to have a slight drop of about one foot from the centre of the pitch to each corner to help with drainage. On 10 September 1898 Roker Park was officially opened by Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry
. The first match at Roker Park was a friendly against Liverpool F.C.
which Sunderland won 1-0, with Jim Leslie
scoring the stadium's first ever goal.
The Roker End was concreted in 1912, and by 1913 the capacity had risen to 50,000.
Then in 1929 the old wooden grandstand was demolished and replaced by a new Main Stand, which was designed by Archibald Leitch
, whose influence, the criss-cross lattice work, can still be seen at Ibrox (Rangers
), Home Park (Plymouth Argyle
) and Goodison Park
(Everton
). The work on the new Main Stand nearly bankrupted the club. By this time the official capacity of Roker Park was 60,000 but at some matches they would have crowds as large as 75,000. More work continued in the 1930s and in 1936 the Clock Stand was rebuilt. The 114 m (375 ft) long structure was officially opened by Lady Raine, whose husband was Sir Walter Raine, the Chairman of Sunderland AFC at the time.
A bomb landed in the middle of the pitch during the Second World War, killing a policeman who was walking past the ground. In 1952, Roker Park was fitted with floodlights, being only the second ground in the country to do so after Arsenal
's Highbury stadium
. The lights were only a temporary addition, and were replaced by permanent structures at the end of the season after proving to be a success. When England
hosted the 1966 World Cup, improvements were made to the Clock Stand, involving the addition of seats, and a roof over the Fulwell End.
During the 1970s, there were even more improvements to Roker Park. These improvements included installing underground sprinklers, upgrading the floodlights to European Standard Lux Value, installing electronic crowd monitoring systems, and re-sheeting the roof. In the 1980s, with a downturn in the club's fortunes (which included a season in the Football League Third Division
), Roker Park started to see a demise. The capacity was severely reduced, with the Roker End suffering the most.
In the early 1990s, new FA rules following the publication of the Taylor Report
meant the stadium would have to have been upgraded to all-seater status, which would have consisted of a much smaller capacity than the sort of attendances that Sunderland could expect, as they had played in the penultimate First Division
campaign (1990-91 season
) before the creation of the Premier League and were aiming for a swift return to the top flight (although promotion was ultimately not achieved until the 1995-96 season
).
The site was too confined for expansion so chairman Bob Murray decided to look for a site for a new stadium. In 1992, plans were unveiled to build a 48,000-seat stadium near the Nissan car factory in Washington
, which would be part of a mega leisure complex, but Nissan objected to such a site being developed near their headquarters. Instead, five years later in 1997, Sunderland moved to the Stadium of Light
, in nearby Monkwearmouth
, on the site of the closed Monkwearmouth Colliery.
The 1996-1997 season was the last at Roker Park, which was also Sunderland's first ever season in the Premier League, ending unfortunately in relegation for the club.
The last competitive match at the ground was a 3-0 victory over Everton F.C.
.
In a special ceremony after the final game Charlie Hurley
(voted the club's Player of the Century) dug up the centre spot of the ground for it to be planted at the new stadium. The site of the old stadium was redeveloped for housing.
Following the move to the Stadium of Light
, Roker Park was demolished and in its place was built a housing estate. To commemorate Roker Park, the streets were named Promotion Close, Clockstand Close, Goalmouth Close, Midfield Drive, Turnstile Mews and Roker Park Close.
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
stadium situated in Roker
Roker
Roker is a tourist resort and affluent area of Sunderland, North East England, bounded on the south by the River Wear and Monkwearmouth, on the east by the North Sea, to the west by Fulwell and on the north by Seaburn. It is administered as part of the City of Sunderland.The majority of the...
, Sunderland. The stadium was the home of the English football club Sunderland A.F.C.
Sunderland A.F.C.
Sunderland Association Football Club is an English association football club based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear who currently play in the Premier League...
from 1897 to 1997 before the club moved to the Stadium of Light
Stadium of Light
The Stadium of Light is an all-seater football stadium in Sunderland, England. With space for 49,000 spectators, the Stadium of Light has the fifth-largest capacity of any English football stadium. The stadium primarily hosts Sunderland A.F.C. matches...
. Near the end of the stadium's history, its capacity was around 22,500 with only a small part of the stadium being seated. Despite this, the stadium's capacity had been higher in previous years, attracting a record crowd of 75,118.
History
In the 1890s, the then SunderlandSunderland A.F.C.
Sunderland Association Football Club is an English association football club based in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear who currently play in the Premier League...
chairman and his brother decided to build a bigger ground for the club, to replace what was then the club's current ground at Newcastle Road. The club had negotiated to buy farmland that belonged to a Mr. Tennant and part of the agreement was that Sunderland would have to build a house on the site as well as their new stadium. Until this house was built, Sunderland still had to pay rent on the land.
Within a year of the land being bought, Roker Park had been built, with the wooden stands only taking three months to build. The Clock Stand had 32 steps, no seats, and a crush barrier for safety. The turf was brought from Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, and was of such a high quality that it lasted for 38 years. The pitch was designed to have a slight drop of about one foot from the centre of the pitch to each corner to help with drainage. On 10 September 1898 Roker Park was officially opened by Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry
Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry
Charles Stewart Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry KG, GCVO, PC, DL, JP , styled Viscount Castlereagh between 1872 and 1884, was an Anglo-Irish Conservative politician, landowner and benefactor, who served in various capacities in the Conservative administrations of the late 19th and...
. The first match at Roker Park was a friendly against Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool Football Club is an English Premier League football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. Liverpool has won eighteen League titles, second most in English football, seven FA Cups and a record seven League Cups...
which Sunderland won 1-0, with Jim Leslie
Jim Leslie
Jim Leslie was a Scottish footballer who played for Sunderland as a forward. He made his debut for Sunderland on 4 September 1897 against Sheffield Wednesday in a 1–0 win at Olive Grove...
scoring the stadium's first ever goal.
The Roker End was concreted in 1912, and by 1913 the capacity had risen to 50,000.
Then in 1929 the old wooden grandstand was demolished and replaced by a new Main Stand, which was designed by Archibald Leitch
Archibald Leitch
Archibald "Offside Archie" Leitch was a Scottish architect, most famous for his work designing football stadia throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.-Early work:...
, whose influence, the criss-cross lattice work, can still be seen at Ibrox (Rangers
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...
), Home Park (Plymouth Argyle
Plymouth Argyle F.C.
Plymouth Argyle Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Plymouth, Devon, that plays in Football League Two.Since becoming professional in 1903, the club has won five Football League titles, five Southern League titles and one Western League title. The 2009–10 season was the...
) and Goodison Park
Goodison Park
Goodison Park is a football stadium located in Walton, Liverpool, England. The stadium has been home to Everton F.C. since its completion in 1892 and is one of the world's first purpose-built football grounds...
(Everton
Everton F.C.
Everton Football Club are an English professional association football club from the city of Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football...
). The work on the new Main Stand nearly bankrupted the club. By this time the official capacity of Roker Park was 60,000 but at some matches they would have crowds as large as 75,000. More work continued in the 1930s and in 1936 the Clock Stand was rebuilt. The 114 m (375 ft) long structure was officially opened by Lady Raine, whose husband was Sir Walter Raine, the Chairman of Sunderland AFC at the time.
A bomb landed in the middle of the pitch during the Second World War, killing a policeman who was walking past the ground. In 1952, Roker Park was fitted with floodlights, being only the second ground in the country to do so after Arsenal
Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...
's Highbury stadium
Arsenal Stadium
Arsenal Stadium was a football stadium in Highbury, North London, which was the home ground of Arsenal Football Club between 6 September 1913 and 7 May 2006...
. The lights were only a temporary addition, and were replaced by permanent structures at the end of the season after proving to be a success. When England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
hosted the 1966 World Cup, improvements were made to the Clock Stand, involving the addition of seats, and a roof over the Fulwell End.
During the 1970s, there were even more improvements to Roker Park. These improvements included installing underground sprinklers, upgrading the floodlights to European Standard Lux Value, installing electronic crowd monitoring systems, and re-sheeting the roof. In the 1980s, with a downturn in the club's fortunes (which included a season in the Football League Third Division
Football League Third Division
The Football League Third Division was the 3 tier of English Football from 1920 until 1992 when after the formation of the Football Association Premier League saw the league renamed The Football League Division Two...
), Roker Park started to see a demise. The capacity was severely reduced, with the Roker End suffering the most.
In the early 1990s, new FA rules following the publication of the Taylor Report
Taylor Report
The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster Inquiry report, better known as the Taylor Report is a document, whose development was overseen by Lord Taylor of Gosforth, concerning the aftermath and causes of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. An interim report was published in August 1989, and the final...
meant the stadium would have to have been upgraded to all-seater status, which would have consisted of a much smaller capacity than the sort of attendances that Sunderland could expect, as they had played in the penultimate First Division
Football League First Division
The First Division was a division of The Football League between 1888 and 2004 and the highest division in English football until the creation of the Premier League in 1992. The secondary tier in English football has since become known as the Championship....
campaign (1990-91 season
1990-91 in English football
The 1990–91 season was the 111th season of competitive football in England.- First Division :Arsenal won the league. Runners-up spot was achieved by Liverpool, who had led the table for much of the first half of the season but had been shell-shocked in February by the sudden resignation of manager...
) before the creation of the Premier League and were aiming for a swift return to the top flight (although promotion was ultimately not achieved until the 1995-96 season
1995-96 in English football
- Premiership :Newcastle United were 12 points clear at the top of Manchester United, but Alex Ferguson's relatively young and inexperienced side overhauled them during the second half of the season to win the title....
).
The site was too confined for expansion so chairman Bob Murray decided to look for a site for a new stadium. In 1992, plans were unveiled to build a 48,000-seat stadium near the Nissan car factory in Washington
Washington, Tyne and Wear
Washington is a town in the City of Sunderland in Tyne and Wear, England. Historically part of County Durham, it joined a new county in 1974 with the creation of Tyne and Wear...
, which would be part of a mega leisure complex, but Nissan objected to such a site being developed near their headquarters. Instead, five years later in 1997, Sunderland moved to the Stadium of Light
Stadium of Light
The Stadium of Light is an all-seater football stadium in Sunderland, England. With space for 49,000 spectators, the Stadium of Light has the fifth-largest capacity of any English football stadium. The stadium primarily hosts Sunderland A.F.C. matches...
, in nearby Monkwearmouth
Monkwearmouth
Monkwearmouth is an area of Sunderland located at the north side of the mouth of the River Wear. It was one of the three original settlements on the banks of the River Wear along with Bishopwearmouth and Sunderland, the area now known as the East End. It includes the area around St. Peter's Church...
, on the site of the closed Monkwearmouth Colliery.
The 1996-1997 season was the last at Roker Park, which was also Sunderland's first ever season in the Premier League, ending unfortunately in relegation for the club.
The last competitive match at the ground was a 3-0 victory over Everton F.C.
Everton F.C.
Everton Football Club are an English professional association football club from the city of Liverpool. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football...
.
In a special ceremony after the final game Charlie Hurley
Charlie Hurley
Charles John Hurley born 4 October 1936) was a centre back. He began his career at Millwall, where his term at The Den was disrupted by injury which certainly delayed his debut on the international stage. Hurley is best remembered from his time at Sunderland, where he was named the Black Cats'...
(voted the club's Player of the Century) dug up the centre spot of the ground for it to be planted at the new stadium. The site of the old stadium was redeveloped for housing.
Following the move to the Stadium of Light
Stadium of Light
The Stadium of Light is an all-seater football stadium in Sunderland, England. With space for 49,000 spectators, the Stadium of Light has the fifth-largest capacity of any English football stadium. The stadium primarily hosts Sunderland A.F.C. matches...
, Roker Park was demolished and in its place was built a housing estate. To commemorate Roker Park, the streets were named Promotion Close, Clockstand Close, Goalmouth Close, Midfield Drive, Turnstile Mews and Roker Park Close.