On 4th March 1961, with Spurs top of the league and favourites to secure the title, they travelled to Second Division Sunderland in the FA Cup Quarter Final.
Even before this favourable draw, Spurs were sweeping all before them in the English game. Second Division Sunderland, it seemed, would simply be another straightforward hurdle for them to clear on their relentless surge to the coveted League and Cup double. How wrong could they be !
Spurs took an early lead, through a Cliff Jones goal in the 9th minute. They hoped this would silence the legendary “Roker Roar”, but with more than 61,000 packed into Roker Park, it was going to take more than that to silence it.
At the start of the second half, the Roker Roar increased in volume, which in turn inspired the second division team. Early in the second half, Sunderland won 3 corners in quick succession. With each one the intensity of noise grew as the Rokermen piled bodies into the penalty area in search of the equaliser and in the 50th minute it duly arrived. A diving header from a corner, which Brown could only parry and Sunderland forced an equaliser.
Hundreds of fans poured onto the pitch swamping the Sunderland players in what has gone down as the first spontaneous pitch invasion of modern times. The match was stopped for almost four minutes as delirious fans were cleared from the pitch!
From the restart the ‘Roker Roar’ reached ear-shattering proportions and it continued for the remainder of the game as Sunderland surged forward in search of the winner. However, the pitch invasion had given Spurs the opportunity to reorganise and they were now defending in depth, relying on the occasional breakaway to ease the pressure.
Moments later the final whistle blew, much to the relief of the beleaguered Spurs players who had managed to survive an almight scare, with the possibility of their Double still intact.
It was an experience that Danny Blanchflower never forgot. “I remember sitting in a capacity crowd in Barcelona, the wild excitement of a cup-tie at St.James’s Park and over 60,000 Manchester United fanatics packing the ground at Old Trafford this season,” he wrote a few days after the tie, “These and many more scenes of wild thrills I remember. But nothing I have ever heard equalled the intensity of that wild roar at Roker Park when Sunderland drew level. As we fished the ball out of the net and those wild-with-delight Sunderland fans streamed onto the field, I began to realise what the man meant when he coined the phrase ‘an ear-splitting roar’. I know the north-east is a fanatical soccer area but I doubt whether it has ever seen such excitement before – or ever will again.”
Spurs made no mistake in the replay, winning 5-0 back at White Hart Lane and the rest, as they say, is history