“Who is going to stop Law, Best & Charlton” asked Hurley. “You might not be able to do that yourself, Charlie” replied manager Alan Brown in a rare moment of humour!
It was the 1963/64 season, an historic season for Sunderland as they would once again take their place in the top tier following their first ever relegation in 1957/58.
Alan Brown had built a team that would go toe to toe with Don Revie’s Leeds United for the championship that season. It was a team that many thought was only a couple of players away from being a very very good team, but could they hold their own in the first division?
The FA Cup that season created a couple of good opportunities for Sunderland to test themselves against the best the top tier had to offer.
In the 5th round they put the first division title holders Everton out of the competition, blowing them away by three goals to one in front of a packed Roker Park.
In the 6th round they drew the current FA Cup holders Manchester United and for two of the three games it took to decide this tie, Sunderland would more than match the Busby Babes!
An incident-packed, drama-filled game at Old Trafford in front of 61,700 fans that included 16,000 from Sunderland saw the Lads heading into the final knockings of the game three goals to one in front with goals from George Mulhall and two from Johnny Crossan (one of these a penalty). Two goals in two minutes from Georgie Best and Bobby Charlton pulled the Red Devils level, with Monty suffering the effects of a hefty smack in the head from Denis Law.
The replay four days later at Roker Park would provide just as much drama on and off the pitch.
The quick turnaround for the replay (four days later) meant that there was no chance for the club to make this game all-ticket. Season card holders were guaranteed entry with a ticket and the rest would have to roll up on the night and take their chances. Therein lay the problem, because fans did not wait for the night and queues started forming at turnstiles by early afternoon, with roads around the ground and into the vicinity becoming jammed and stretching back miles before tea-time. There were conservative estimates in the press the next day that suggested 120,000 people had been in the vicinity of the ground at a given point on the night as cup fever hit Wearside.
Man United half-back Pat Crerand recalled “I remember trying to get to the ground in the coach. I thought someone was going to get killed. The coach couldn’t get through and it was only ninety minutes before the match. It was wall-to-wall people, totally solid, we had to get off the coach and fight our way through to the players entrance. It was bedlam inside the ground as well”.
What Crerand did not know was that two people had lost their lives: a thirty-nine-year-old holidaying from New Zealand was killed in a crush when the Roker End exit gates burst open. The other was an eighteen-year-old girl who collapsed running to the ground. In all, over a hundred people were taken to hospital, including sixteen with broken limbs. The ambulances had major issues getting to the injured because of the crowds.
The police came in for some criticism in the press but their numbers were officially given as seventy to manage the crowd and forty-six to control the traffic.
Most reasonable observers of this situation express surprise that more people were not injured and it is only good luck that more were not killed.
The real issue was the FA insistence that replays were played in the immediate days after the original tie. With no time to print and distribute tickets, there is no real way to control a massive crowd heading expectantly to a game.
When the Roker End exit gates burst open, it was estimated that thousands of fans flooded into the ground. The official gate was given as 46,727 though unofficial estimates reckon there could have been upward of 75,000 people in Roker Park that night.
Len Ashurst recalled that thousands of people failed to gain access and the crowd inside the ground was so vast that some had to be accommodated on the running track, also that many scrambled up the floodlights and sat on top of the Clock Stand. He remembered the Roker End terracing that stretched high into the night sky being overflowing and must have been close to disaster as eighteen years later it was listed unsafe and had its capacity halved by council officers.
Ashurst also remembered that the official attendance being given as under 50,000 meant that the agreed bonus of £5 for every 1,000 over 50,000 was not paid to the players! Also that the normal practice for the players was to walk up to the ground from the Roker Hotel in a pre-match stretch before the game, which also allowed the fans to interact with the players in the flesh. On this occasion they had to scramble over car roofs and bonnets to eventually make it to the players entrance, with thousands upon thousands of people packed into the street and side streets outside the ground.
The Busby Babes were real box office and cup fever had really gripped the Wearside public. The only change the Red Devils had in their line-up from the first tie was that Nobby Stiles was injured and a bright young prospect called Phil Chisnall would come into the starting eleven.
Chisnall went on to have an interesting career. Matt Busby once described him as one of the best passers of a football in the English game. Up until his passing in 2021, he was the only player to transfer directly from Man United to Liverpool. His first three managers in his senior career were Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Alf Ramsey (England U23). When Match of the Day started in 1963/64 he was the very first player seen on screen to touch the ball in a game v Arsenal. After a brief stint at Liverpool he played for Southend between 1967–1971 and then a season with Stockport in 1971/72.
Reflecting on his career in 2007 he said “you signed a contract, stayed loyal to your club until it was finished and regarded your wife as your agent”.
Young Chisnall may have been drafted in, but United had plenty of heavy-hitters in their line-up, with Tony Dunne, Maurice Setters, Paddy Crerand and Big Bill Foulkes in their defence and David Herd, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and Georgie Best joining Chisnall in the front five.
For Sunderland, half-back Jim McNab was still not fit, so young Dave Elliott retained his place in the half-back line having played only his second game in the tie at Old Trafford a few days before.
Jimmy Montgomery appeared to have recovered from his head knock and took his place in goal with the same team that had contested the epic first tie.
What ensued upon kick-off was another epic match, with Sunderland more than matching the Busby Babes. Every attack brought surges in the crowd as noise levels peaked with anticipation and excitement.
On forty-one minutes Nick Sharkey scored a brilliant scissors kick to put Sunderland one goal up. He was continuing his performance from Old Trafford where he had played very well and given Bill Foulkes a torrid time.
Denis Law equalised just past the hour and there was no more scoring in the ninety minutes, though chances for either side, as the game went into extra-time.
In the first minute of this period a shot by Sharkey was deflected into the net by Maurice Setters. The goal prompted an exuberant pitch invasion and took a while to clear and the game to continue.
Sunderland held out with some style and even caused further consternation for the visitors as they broke on United’s stretched defence.
Just as in the first game at Old Trafford, Bobby Charlton right at the end of extra time came up with a rare headed goal to break Sunderland hearts and take the tie to a third game.
It bordered on almost unbelievable drama for the massive crowd, who had witnessed another fantastic game.
Len Ashurst had kept the ‘fifth Beatle’ Georgie Best reasonably quiet and Charlie Hurley had marshalled his defence well enough to have enjoyed a few saunters upfield for corners and free-kicks. Georges Herd and Mulhall had also played very well on a night when the whole team had contributed.
The replay would take place the following midweek at Huddersfield’s Leeds Road stadium.
Sunderland had the difficult task of a Wear/Tees derby at Roker Park in the league to tackle in between this replay and played the same starting eleven to keep their promotion campaign on track in a tough and draining 0–0 draw with Boro.
Meanwhile Matt Busby had determined to win the FA Cup again and rested Law, Best, Charlton and Setters for their league game, with Busby declaring to the FA that all four were “genuinely injured”.
Almost 55,000 fans would converge on Leeds Road for the second replay as this FA Cup odyssey was about to be decided. Best, Law, Charlton and Setters all played, thankfully recovered from their injuries!
The following morning at Roker Park, Len Ashurst described the ground as “looking like a bomb site, crush barriers at both ends of the ground had been bent and twisted by the weight of the crowd and hundreds of shoes that people had lost in the surges were lined up in the players tunnel by groundsman Jack Drydon.
Sixteen goals would be scored over the three games in front of 160,000 fans; it was a fantastic series of games. Unfortunately in the last game most of the action was all at the wrong end of the pitch as Sunderland ran out of legs. Despite a Sharkey goal on forty-eight minutes, five second-half goals with a hat-trick from Law and strikes from Chisnall and David Herd won the tie for the Busby Babes.
Nonetheless Sunderland had gone toe to toe with one of the best teams in Britain (and soon to be the best in Europe), giving confidence that should they win promotion they had the ability to handle themselves in the top tier.
Pat Crerand said of these games “The three matches were fantastic games and a great atmosphere. In those days the FA Cup was a great leveller, anybody could beat you. Sunderland was doing well and they had absolutely fantastic support. They must have thought they were going to win. I would see them again like that, I saw it outside of Wembley in 1973, all of them were saying they were going to win. I was telling them you’ve got no chance but they did beat Leeds and I was wrong”.
Many years after this game, the revered Bobby Charlton was asked to select the most memorable match of his career, would it be the World Cup final of 1966 or the European Cup final of 1968? He chose these series of three FA Cup games against Sunderland and in particular the one at Roker Park.
In his autobiography My Manchester United Years he admitted he had been shocked at how good Sunderland as a second division side had been. He went on to say “The second game at Roker Park distilled everything I believed was true about the potential of football to capture the imagination of the ordinary working man. There was fever in that moist air”.
Charlton believed that the three games against Sunderland revealed that the side rebuilt by Matt Busby after the Munich tragedy in 1958 was destined for great things.
FA Cup 6th Round Replay
Date – 04.03.1964
Venue – Roker Park
Attendance – 46,727
Sunderland – Montgomery; Irwin; Ashurst; Harvey; Hurley; Elliott; Usher; Herd G; Sharkey; Crossan; Mulhall.
Manchester United – Gaskell; Brennan; Dunne; Crerand; Foulkes; Setters; Herd D; Chisnall; Charlton; Law; Best.
Goal scorers – Sharkey 41 mins; Law 62 mins; Setters OG 91 mins; Charlton 120 mins.
Category: General Sports
