'Happy-go-lucky character, great sense of humour' - Sunderland legend Gary Rowell deserves the loudest of Roker Roars
Former Sunderland Echo sports writer Graeme Anderson remembers his friend, SAFC club legend, Gary Rowell.
Tributes at short notice are something of a minefield for football clubs, given every minute of the matchday experience is so carefully choreographed ahead of the game.
So, I have no idea, as I write this on a Sunday morning, how Sunderland Football Club plans to mark the passing, just yesterday, of one of its most beloved sons. A minute’s silence is the usual honour, but I hope, for Gary’s sake, it’s a minute’s applause. And, maybe, one last Roker Roar. It’s what he would have wanted - he loved nothing more than the sound of a Sunderland crowd making noise.
It’s also entirely right that his passing should be marked by an appreciation of a life so richly lived, as much as sadness at his leaving us too soon. If I ask anyone who ever knew or met Gary to think of him, they will automatically recall him laughing or smiling.
He was a sunny, happy-go-lucky character with a great sense of humour and a quick wit. For those of us lucky enough to get to know him, he enriched our lives immeasurably.
And today, at the Stadium of Light, a fixture that meant more to him than any other, offers the perfect moment for fans to say their own farewell to him at a moment of maximum poignancy. He always did have a great sense of timing. I grew up in a ‘Gary Rowell world’ long before I met him.
In the late 1970s, Judith Halliday sat next to me in class and her exercise book covers were a masterclass of doodling, drawings and chants celebrating Seaham’s finest. She wasn’t the only one.
Local hero Rowell was a fan's favourite from the start, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. As well as his steady supply of goals, he shared the same passion for the club as the fans, and the fact that he was young, gifted and handsome only helped his popularity.
Sunderland spent the early 1980s in the top flight but sometimes if felt like the only area where they made much of an impression was in the table of top goalscorers, where Sunderland’s Gary Rowell would regularly feature on the same list as the likes of Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish, Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks.
Naturally, his goalscoring prowess made him an idol to fans - he was top scorer in six of seven seasons from 1977-84 - though he always pointed out he was a goalscoring midfielder, rather than an out-and-out striker.
Even so, he was one of only three players to score more than 100 goals for Sunderland since the end of the Second World War - alongside Len Shackleton and Kevin Phillips. As if a ton of goals was not enough, his place in Sunderland folklore was assured in February, 1979 when he scored a hat-trick at St James’s Park in a 4-1 win over derby rivals Newcastle United, (he also set up the fourth).
The demi-god status he achieved with that game was helped by the perfect photograph, taken just as he was about to put away a penalty to complete his hat-trick. No-one who has ever seen it, forgets it.
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And that’s how he will always be remembered, this latter-day Peter Pan, because just like the photograph, he never seemed to age and remained boyish as he headed into his 60s.
The statistics tell us Gary scored 103 goals in 297 Sunderland games and was tipped to become a full England international before serious leg injuries curbed his progress, but I’ll leave it to others to remind us of his footballing prowess.
I want to tell you what a fantastic person he was and how tragic it is to lose him to the leukaemia he battled against for the past couple of years. It says everything about the respect and regard he was held in that his keen desire for privacy was honoured, and that no one in the small circle who knew how unwell he was shared that information.
They say you should never meet your heroes because you’ll find they have feet of clay, and I’ve found there’s some truth to that. But if that’s the rule, Gary was the exception to it. I was fortunate to find that out over the many years I got to know him through ghost-writing his regular weekly football column for the Sunderland Echo and attending games with him.
Among my most treasured memories were post-match at nights the Stadium of Light, around 6 pm when Audrey would pop her head around the Press room door to discreetly tell Gary and me that the Players’ Lounge next door was now completely empty and we could drop in for a quiet drink if we wanted to. We always wanted to.
It became our ritual for many seasons, although I think the reason we were invited was that people at the club just loved having Gary around. The Lounge in those days was full of famous Sunderland photographs and Gary would always chuckle and sit himself down on the sofa underneath the picture of him taking the famous penalty.
“I’ll just sit here,” he would say, smiling as he looked up at his photograph.
It became our version of Liverpool’s dirty boot room as we raked over the details of the game we’d just seen, analysing and dissecting, agreeing and disagreeing and those conversations would often help shape my Monday match reports.
Often our conversations were interrupted, George the eternal SAFC steward might quietly drop in to drop off a fine bottle of red that had been left from the manager’s post-match tete-a-tete with his opposite number. “Shame to let it go to waste,” he would say, and Gary would agree, though I never liked red.
Sometimes the managers themselves would wander through the Lounge if they wanted to make a discreet exit from the stadium via a side door. Martin O’Neill would stop to chat to Gary, as did Steve Bruce, Gary’s former team-mate at Norwich City.
Paolo Di Canio once breezed through and without, breaking his stride, pointed at Gary and the photograph above him and exclaimed: “Ah, Gary, hat-treek, hat-treek, hat-treek!”
Gary’s son, Peter, recalled that moment when we talked of his father and the irreplaceable gap he leaves.
Family was always the most important thing to Gary. He was close to his parents and doted on his sons, who returned the favour. Peter and his brother Chris were with Gary throughout his long illness and by his bedside yesterday.
Though heartbroken, they appreciate what a fantastic father they had, their shared closeness and the bond and the self-deprecating humour which went with it. I remember when Kevin Phillips finally went past Gary’s 103 Sunderland goals tally after long weeks of closing in, and Gary rang Peter from the game: “Well, Superkev’s finally taken my record, son,” he said. “ Do you still love me?”
“Yeah, of course,” came the reply. “Just not as much as I used to.” Gary loved that, and I always loved the closeness he had with his sons. Growing up in Burnley, where Gary settled when he hung up his boots, it took Chris and Peter a little while to adjust to how famous and revered their father was among Sunderland fans.
“He used to get requests from fans every week, even in the last few years,” said Peter, “and he’d always sign things or help whenever he could. “Now and again, he’d have Sunderland fans just knocking on his front door to say hello, and he’d always make them feel welcome.”
That’s no surprise given how much love Gary had for Sunderland fans, who he would always say were the best in the world. “I don’t know any group of fans who could have gone through so much disappointment and still come back for more, week in, week out, and in such numbers,” he would point out.
“Honestly, I don’t.” Sunderland fans will no doubt remember his lifetime of love for them today. I can think of no one who was more one of their own than Gary Rowell.
How he would have loved to be commentating on the game this afternoon or preparing his Echo column, hoping to report on a famous Sunderland win. As it is, he will be there in spirit only, but he will always be part of the fabric of this famous, frustrating, fabulous football club.
While he’ll always be remembered as the player he was, if I were ever asked to name someone who was the epitome of the perfect Sunderland fan - someone who summed up the decency, the genuineness, and the passion which, at its heart, is the best of Sunderland fans - well, number one would be Gary Rowell.
And while today is the saddest day, in some ways, I hope Sunderland fans will give Gary a fitting send-off this afternoon and a final, massive Roker Roar to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. He deserves it, and more. Ha’way the lad.
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