Next season could see the end of a match day tradition that has survived 96 years, an essential home match ritual that has followed the club from Roker Park to the Stadium of Light. An experience every fan young and old will be familiar with, it has remained unchanged and unchallenged season after season. Will this year be its last?
For those fans who live south of the Wear or enjoy their pre-match drinking in the town centre, there has only ever been one way to get to the match - the Grade II listed iron arches of the Wearmouth Bridge. Designed by civil engineering firm Mott, Hey and Anderson, the Wearmouth Bridge was constructed at the Dalmarnock Ironworks in Glasgow, by Sir William Arrol and Co, the company that had also provided the Forth Rail Bridge and London’s Tower Bridge. The bridge was constructed over the Wear at a cost of £232,000 which included the dismantling of the earlier bridge which had existed in various guises since 1796.
Two days after the Duke of York (later to be crowned King George VI) opened the new bridge on 31st October 1929, fans crossed under the huge arch to see Sunderland beat Huddersfield 1-0 at Roker Park through a Billy Clunas penalty (“the best penalty taker I ever saw”- Raich Carter).
No doubt those fans crossing under the new ironwork of the Wearmouth Bridge were examining every rivet. As part of the official opening, the Duke of York had hammered in a solid silver rivet, which remains hidden in a secret location to this day.
Full time is when the River Wear crossing comes into its own. The swarm of supporters leaving on the final whistle and heading into town necessitates the closure of traffic lanes and the march of supporters spills under the famous arch. I always walk on the road looking up through the green girders. There is a huge energy in the swell of red and white shirts and scarfs that brings everything to a standstill up to St Mary’s Way. It is a walk that has been captured in both artwork and photography, notably Stuart Roy Clarke’s Homes of Football.
Wearmouth Bridge is synonymous with Sunderland AFC, being adopted into the new club crest in 1997, and even briefly in the 1980s wearing the same red and white colours as the team until returning to green in 1991. The structure has been used to celebrate promotions and drape good luck banners, but next season the Wearmouth Bridge may be casting envious eyes up the river.
The new footbridge linking Keel Square to Sheepfold Stables will have as big an impact on the matchday routine as it will on the future geography and development of the city. It will whisk supporters from the Culture Quarter to the SoL with an efficiency that requires a complete re-evaluation of pre-match drinking time. What it will mean for footfall over the Wearmouth Bridge on a match day remains to be seen, but the big arch has carried the weight of supporters through good and bad. After 97 years it might deserve a bit of support.
