There were loads of em back in 73 at school , the Man Utd or Chelsea affect of today but wearing Leeds scarfs for school instead of replica shirts .

Nobody I knew went to Elland Road but they all watch em on YTV Sunday afternoon football highlights with Keith Macklin , the equivalent sky coverage today .

Harvey , Reaney , Madeley , Hunter , Giles , Bremner , Lorimar , Jones , Clarke and Gray .

They were nothing to do with me , I watched us at Oakwell in the 4th division getting hammered by Darlington , Stockport and Mansfield .

We never got past the first round of the cup , we were always knocked out by Halifax or Bradford City usually at home .

The day of the 73 cup final I was a Sunderland fan , I even wore my red n white bar scarf for the match that afternoon .

Sunderland didn't have a chance , they were a mid table second division team with players nobody had heard of and Leeds only had to turn up , score four or five goals and retain the cup .

That's how football worked for a 10 year old kid back then , especially if they went to Oakwell and knew nothing else .

I pinned my colours to Sunderland just to be awkward , I haven't changed in 45 years I hear you quite rightly say , even Mr Awkward of Awkwardville my old man shook his head , Leeds 3 or 4 nil he said and Sunderland will be lucky to get nil .

Sunderland scored fairly early on , my old man smiled and said still a long time to go and 4-1 Leeds .

Except Sunderland hung on , Jim Montgomery had the game of his life and Leeds just couldn't get anything passed him .

The longer the match went on the more nervous I became , I seem to remember going upstairs for 5 minutes because I was convinced Leeds were going to spoil it all and score and I didn't want to see it .

They didn't and Sunderland pulled off one of the great shocks of all time , I couldn't believe it .

School on monday was fun , we gave the Leeds fans !!! some right stick , fights broke out all break time , the score wrote on blackboards and hand signals and it went on for weeks , they never actually lived it down .

I had something to hit back with after we had got thrashed by Torquay , one word is all it took , " SUNDERLAND " , it was the topper to end all toppers , they were still flipping 6 months on.

During the dark days of bottom of the 4th division Sunderland gave me some ammo where there were none .

Just thought I'd share that with you , awkward pays tha noze :-) :-) :-)