On this day in 1980, Sunderland breezed past Leeds United in the First Division to move up to sixth place. There was a brace from Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson and goals from Gary Rowell and Alan Brown.
Momentum from our promotion to the top flight in the 1979/80 campaign had seemingly carried over into the next season and we’d won our first two games back in the big time to see us actually top the table at the end of gameweek two. Our form would, understandably, dip following this and we lost two, drew two and won one of our next five. That meant we were still a respectable 8th place going into this one however. We were faring much better than our opponents as well, Leeds had managed just one win in their opening seven league matches, so a win was very much on the cards.
We took the lead after 11 minutes when Sam Allardyce lobbed a great ball towards Alan Brown on the right wing, Brown dribbled past Neil Firm and passed it into the six yard box where Pop Robson was waiting. Robson absolutely smashed it into the roof of the net, just getting there before a Leeds defender could make a clearance.
Robson had his second just three minutes afterwards. Stan Cummins received the ball inside the box and got round the goalkeeper, John Lukic, and poked it to Robson. This time his close range effort took a huge deflection off of a defender and trickled over the line. That meant we had a two goal advantage going into the break.
Leeds put themselves back into the contest pretty quickly following the restart and they did so from a corner. It was put into the box, headed away and then a Leeds player tried his luck from outside the box. It was going wide but Derek Parlane redirected it with his head and it caught Chris Turner off guard and flew into the left hand corner of the net.
Most of the chance of an away team comeback dissipated not long after their goal though. They failed to clear their lines properly after a Sunderland attack and Kevin Arnott was able to loop a ball into the danger area where Gary Rowell was able to capitalise, taking a slight deflection off of Leeds player Brian Flynn, and once again give us a two goal advantage.
Goal number four came just before the conclusion of the fixture, Brown was played in nicely and struck into the bottom left corner to wrap up a great victory.
We weren’t able to maintain a top half position and drifted dangerously towards the relegation zone as the season progressed. A defeat for Norwich City and an unlikely win at Anfield on the final day guaranteed our survival however and we ended up finishing 17th, two points above the drop. Leeds were able to repair their fortunes somewhat and managed to finish up in ninth despite the poor start. Rowell finished as our top scorer, with 11 goals in all competitions.
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