You made your Sunderland bow at 17 and at just 20 you led the side out at Wembley. Where did this maturity come from?
It was Alan Durban who gave me my debut, and I was so nervous that I almost couldn’t keep my pre-match meal down! In the end I quite enjoyed the match, despite the fact we lost 2-0 at Notts County when we were both in the First Division. It helped that I’d been in the squad before: although I never even got stripped, I had a little taste of what the nerves can be like. As I slowly grew to be a bigger presence in the squad, those nerves became more manageable. Then our skipper, Shaun Elliott, was injured ahead of the 1985 League Cup
