Roker Park

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Roker Park
Location	Sunderland, England
Opened	1898
Closed	1997
Demolished	1997
Owner	Sunderland A.F.C.
Surface	Grass
Architect	Archibald Leitch
Tenants
Sunderland A.F.C.
Seats
Initially: 30,000 Record attendance: 75,118

Roker Park was an English football stadium, the home of Sunderland A.F.C. between 1898 and 1997. The ground was located in the tourist resort of Roker on the north side of Sunderland. Roker Park is also the name of a municipal park in Roker, from which the stadium was named after, which was laid out in the nineteenth century.

The Sunderland A.F.C. chairman and his brother decided to build a bigger ground for Sunderland AFC, to replace the previous Newcastle Road ground which had been the club's home for the past twelve seasons. They negotiated to buy farmland that belonged to a Mr. Tennant, part of the agreement was that Sunderland AFC would have to build a house on the site as well as their new stadium. Until this house was built, Sunderland A.F.C. 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 37 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 the Marquis of Londonderry. The first match at Roker Park was against Liverpool in 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 (Glasgow Rangers) 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 feet) long structure was officially opened by Lady Raine, whose husband was Sir Walter Raine, the Chairman of Sunderland AFC at the time.

During World War II a policeman was killed just outside the ground when a bomb fell in the middle of the pitch.

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, Roker Park started to see a demise. The capacity was severely reduced, with the Roker End suffering the most.

In the 1990s, new FA rules after 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. The site was too confined for expansion, so chairman Bob Murray decided to look for a site for a new stadium. In 1992 major plans were conceived to build a 48,000 super stadium beside the Nissan car factory in Washington, which would be part of a mega leisure complex, but Nissan rejected the plans. Instead, five years later in 1997 Sunderland moved to the Stadium of Light, in nearby Monkwearmouth, on the site of the closed Monkwearmouth Colliery. And so Roker Park was demolished after being the home of Sunderland for 99 years; the last game being a specially-organised friendly against Liverpool, which Sunderland won 1-0, with John Mullin scoring the ground's final goal (the final competitive game being a 3-0 Premier League victory against Everton, with Allan Johnston scoring the final league goal). In a special ceremony after the final game Sunderland A.F.C's player of the century Charlie Hurley dug up the centre spot of the ground for it to be planted at the new stadium. The old ground was replaced with a housing estate.

The name Roker Park will be always remembered for the passion and atmosphere that the fans of Sunderland AFC created, and it is such a testament to this that the noise of the supporters received its own unique name - 'The Roker Roar'.

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