SUNDERLAND’S footballing heritage goes back a very long way before the famous 1973 FA Cup final victory over Leeds remembered for Jimmy Montgomery’s phenomenal double save and Bob Stokoe’s brown trilby.
The city’s first home-grown international, Harry Kayll, then the British pole-vault champion, won his cap almost 100 years earlier, at full-back for England’s rugby team during a 0-0draw against Scotland at The Oval on March 4, 1878.
Whether the pointless outcome had anything to do with it nobody knows but shortly afterwards Kayll emigrated to Canada...