NEW POD: A Tale Of Two Captains

Football clubs like Sunderland AFC do more than win, lose and occasionally ruin your weekend. They remember things. They carry the stories a city might otherwise forget.

In many ways, the club acts as the unofficial historian of the people it serves.

Earlier this week, we sat down with Kieron Brady, who has been digging into one of those hidden Sunderland stories.

Most of us know the name Raich Carter, the local lad lifting trophies and leading the side out at Wembley in 1937. But that same year, another captain from Wearside was leading a very different mission.

Captain Frederick Robinson.

While the team chased cup glory, Robinson was sailing towards the Spanish Civil War, carrying aid to those resisting fascism. Yet even then, he and the other volunteers crowded around a ship’s radio to listen to Sunderland’s result. For a few brief hours, football was their escape. A reminder of home. Of normality. Of who they were fighting for.

It is such a Sunderland image. Lads from these streets, doing something brave and decent, then worrying about the score.

Now, nearly ninety years on, there is a push to give those men the memorial they deserve, a permanent reminder that our history is not just silverware, but solidarity too.

Football clubs are not just teams. They are the keepers of a city’s memory. Those men should not be remembered somewhere else or tucked away in history books. They belong here, in Sunderland, honoured properly, with a memorial that says we have not forgotten our own.

For more information about Solidarity Sunderland click here