“I didn’t bring the magic, it’s always been here,” Bob Stokoe said modestly after second division Sunderland had toppled mighty Leeds United in the 1973 FA Cup final. “I just came back to find it.”
Everyone knows what Stokoe said because the words are inscribed on the plinth of his statue outside the Stadium of Light. That is how big a deal winning the FA Cup used to be. When Stokoe died in 2004 there was never any doubt about the image that would be used to commemorate the club’s greatest post-war success. Opinion is divided over how accurately the sculptor captured the manager and the moment but the worst-dressed man at Wembley leaping off the bench at the final whistle to race to his goalkeeper Jimmy Montgomery was already part of FA Cup final lore.
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