On Saturday 26 October 2024 Sunderland AFC beat Oxford United 2-0 to maintain top spot in the Championship. This marked the end of a great week for the Wearsiders who had thus taken 9 points from the three games following earlier victories at Hull City and Luton Town, struggling after being relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season.
Off the field the club had organised a Founders' Week contending that the club was founded sometime in mid October 1879.
The club historian Rob Mason has consistently defended this position but even he recognises that there is no information or newspaper reports from this time that would confirm the club was formed then or at any point in October 1879 or even in the year 1879. Nothing exists. That is a fact that cannot disputed.
In comparison, of course, there exists reports such as that of the Sunderland Echo of 27 September 1880, reporting that the Sunderland and District Teachers' Association - which was a local trade union affiliated to a larger national organisation - had formed a football club two days earlier. The report does not state where the meeting took place.
It was in 1887 that the first newspaper report that the club was formed in 1879 was written and then it was not until 1929 that this claim appeared again when, as in 1887, it was based entirely on the memories of people, who admittedly did play a role in setting up the club but who were now very elderly.
In the programme for the Oxford game, Mason uses the articles that were written by John Grayston in 1931 when he recalled his experiences of more than 50 years earlier.
What Mason does not state is that these articles are so full of inaccuracies that whatever Grayston states should be treated with great caution.
Keith Graham, who runs The Stat Cat website, which is the most comprehensive stats site online on Sunderland AFC, has written on this and his works are at:-
http://www.thestatcat.co.uk/PDFDocs/GraystonMemoirs1931.pdf
Keith believes that the 1879 claim is wrong:- http://www.thestatcat.co.uk/Article1.aspx
In this respect he is joined by Paul Days, who first discovered the Sunderland Echo report of 25-09-1880, and myself, author of the Charlie Hurley authorised biography and recognised football historian in concluding that it is time the club recognised the obvious and changed the founding date to 1880.
Paul, of course, can't be easily dismissed as he was one of the authors of the Official Club History book sent to all season ticket holders in 1999 and which actually includes an image of the 1884-85 season card that states the club was established in 1880.
Unsurprisingly, Mason prefers in his JUST THE TICKET article for the Oxford programme to ignore this and publish a season ticket for 1888 that does not state when club was established.
Paul, Keith and myself have a number of key supporters. Martin Westby was a recognised football historian who wrote the most comprehensive book to date in 2019 on the origins of football (and rugby) clubs and he was clear that Sunderland AFC was formed in 1880 and not 1879.
Going back to the 1880s, there were annual submissions from 1880 to 1908 by SAFC to Sunderland born Charles Alcock, the then FA Secretary. These submissions formed part of the contents of “The (yearly) Football Annual” and which from 1883 onwards stated the club was formed in 1880.
For more on this read this article from the Durham Miners' Gala 2023 magazine.
