SUNDERLAND 10 YEARS AGO: Yorke devastated to leave Sydney FC

SEPTEMBER 4, 2006

YORKE ‘GUTTED’ TO LEAVE:

New Black Cats signing devastated by Sydney exit

DWIGHT YORKE has told an Australian newspaper that he was left ‘gutted’ and ‘completely devastated by Sydney FC’s decision to sell him to Sunderland.

The Black Cats star signing told the Sydney Daily Telegraph: “I sat by the phone until 5am Friday, just waiting for the call – just waiting for someone from Sydney FC to say they didn’t want me to go, that they still wanted me.

“But that call never came and I’m very emotional about it. I’m absolutely gutted to say the least. Devastated, just devastated.

“The thing is the more I think about it, even if I got a call from someone at the last minute and they said, ‘Dwight, we don’t want you to leave,’ then I think there and then I would have stayed.”

“I definitely would have stayed.”

While Yorke is desperately upset to have left a club, a city and a country where he was extremely happy, it seems as though Sunderland have been in exactly the right place and the right time to nab the Trinidad and Tobago captain.

Yorke could have left Sydney at the end of last season with the Premiership clubs asking for him.

Or he could have gone to the oil rich Middle East for a big pay day – having received a $3.9m offer to play in Qatar.

Instead, he will be arriving on Wearside for a bargain £200,000 fee having shown at the World Cup with his country that he still has genuine quality in his play.