On this day in 1958, Len Ashurst and Cecil Irwin both made their debuts against Ipswich. Cec and Len, the flowerpot men, would go on to be probably our most highly regarded full back pairing of all time.
Lenny the Lion spent three years “on the groundstaff” at Liverpool as a youth, winning seven England Youth caps while training as a printer, before being released in 1957. While playing for Wolves’ third team as an amateur, Sunderland made an approach for his services, so to avoid breaking the professional contract promise he’d been offered at Molyneux, Len asked to go back to his printing apprenticeship and signed for Prescot Cables. Very soon the move to Wearside came to fruition, and the rest is history. His debut came in September 1958 against Ipswich, on the same day as Lads he’d come to regard as team-mates for over a decade – Cec Irwin and Jimmy McNab.
In 1964 they were part of the side that gained promotion, and our defence was the basis for that. Alongside such club legends as Hurley, Anderson, Harvey, and McNab, those full-backs ruled the back line. The pair racked up 809 appearances between them, with Len’s 458 making him our most “capped” outfield player, and second only to Monty in the overall appearances list. was it Cec or was it Len, clattered that winger just then?
Len passed away aged 82 in September 2021, and will always be remembered at Sunderland for all those games, and all those lion-hearted performances.
Ellington-born Cec was a childhood Sunderland fan, and when he got himself the coveted job of carrying the scoreboard around Portland Park during Ashington games, was initially happy with the pay (5 shillings, that’s 25p) but when, in 1956, Sunderland played the mags in the FA Cup quarter final, he had a problem. Cec set off round the dogtrack that surrounded the pitch, Sunderland scored, and he was pelted “with apples, oranges, peanuts, all sorts. When Sunderland scored again in the second half, I told them someone else could do it.”
He progressed through East Northumberland Schools football and caught the eye of several top clubs, turning down Arsenal and spending a month at Burnley. Nothing came of that trial, mainly because Alan Brown jumped in and persuaded Cec that Sunderland was the place to be, so in 1958 he signed as an amateur with the club he’d supported all his life. Having left school at 15 and spent a while on a mining induction course, football seemed a better option. He made his debut six months before turning professional, his only outing of the campaign – hardly surprising as he was only 16. His fullback partner that day was three years older.
Thanks to manager Alan Brown’s forward thinking, he was one of the world’s first overlapping full-backs, and got the Roker crowd on their feet when he bombed down the right and fired in a cross to the likes of Johnny Crossan, Nick Sharkey, Neil Martin, or later on, Joe Baker, Billy Hughes, or Dave Watson.
In all those seasons of tough tackling and great positional sense, there was only the one goal – when he took a Charley Hurley pass, against Forest in the autumn of 1968, and galloped towards the Roker End. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as it transpired) he outpaced his team-mates so had no target and consequently just fired a speculative shot in from distance. Some have claimed that the wind got behind it, which I dispute, as the wind always blew OFF the sea at Roker Park, not ONTO it. Whatever the meteorological conditions, it flew in. We’ll forget the four own goals, obviously, and remember instead the 14 years of loyal service. Cec was my first real Sunderland hero, as I was awestruck by the sight of a defender bombing forward, and I hope he heard my regular roar (as if I could roar at that age) of HAWAAAAAAY CEC! from the Fulwell.
I wasn’t to know they pronounced it Ceecil in Ashington – we certainly didn’t on Wearside.
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