Reflections on Sunderland’s iconic ‘Scottish Schemer’

I was saddened to learn of the passing of George Herd.

During the very first game I witnessed at Roker Park during the 1965/1966 season, he was playing and seemed to be a constant presence for the next couple of seasons as I became enthralled and enraptured by the phenomenon that is Sunderland AFC.

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Was he a Sunderland legend?

That’s not for me to say, but what I will venture to say is that supporters of his generation will no doubt make his case. After all, he was part of a promotion-winning team and involved an era that’s pivotal to our history and probably represented everything that was good about football.

Herd was one of Alan Brown’s key signings as he attempted to return Sunderland to the top division of English football following our sad fall from the top flight in 1957/1958.

Brown paid Clyde a hefty fee of £42,500 for the inside forward, and Herd arrived at Roker Park at the peak of his game, already capped five times by Scotland and with four very good years behind him at Shawfield, including victory in the Scottish Cup in 1958.

He’d progressed through the amateur ranks with Gartcosh Thistle as a right winger, then with junior club Inverness Thistle and on to top amateur club Queens Park, with whom he won a Scottish amateur cap. Not bad for a young lad who had initially no ambition to be a professional footballer!

Herd’s arrival at Roker Park at the end of the 1960/1961 season would be followed by Brian Clough in 1961/1962, and George Mulhall and Johnny Crossan in time for the 1962/1963 season as we came close to finishing third in both campaigns.

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All the while, a team of strength, stamina and skill was being fashioned and Herd was right at the heart of it.

Finally, in 1963/1964, promotion was achieved and with a team that supporters of that era could recite into their dotage.

Sunderland achieved promotion using only seventeen players, and eleven of the regulars played over thirty two games of the league campaign; Herd himself played thirty nine of these games, scoring thirteen goals in the process.

By this point in his career, he was recognised primarily as an inside right, but he could also apply himself to the left and out wide on the right.

It’s a fact that some would criticise Herd for not scoring more goals, but that criticism rarely came from his playing colleagues, who always acknowledged his sharp, clever service and honest endeavour for the full ninety minutes and then some.

Herd’s partnership with right winger Brian Usher and diminutive forward Nick Sharkey as part of the 1963/1964 promotion team was thought to be one of the key ingredients of that season.

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The team of 1963/1964 is rightly lauded in the annals of Sunderland AFC; iconic images imprinted on supporters’ memories and stories that have been told and retold, of that final home game against Charlton Athletic, when promotion was achieved.

Len Ashurst recalled of that game:

It was fitting that George Herd and Johnny Crossan should score the two goals.

They were two fabulous footballers who had been instrumental in scheming and plotting against the best defences in the league, and had weighed in with a hatful of goals between them.

Charlie Hurley remembered the aftermath of the Charlton game and having already done a lap of honour, the crowd refused to leave and the chairman entered the dressing room to beg the players to go out again. This they did, but in his exuberance, Herd did so in nothing but his jockstrap and a shirt!

Hurley also remembered Herd having the audacity of stealing Brian Clough’s thunder a season earlier, in a six-two victory at Roker Park against Grimsby Town.

Clough had scored a hat trick, but Herd had taken the plaudits of his colleagues for his first goal of the season and the double somersault with which he celebrated.

Herd’s gymnastics were not confined to the football pitch.

During away trips and once settled into the hotel, he would try (and usually succeed) in enticing an unsuspecting new player or other teams staying at the hotel into a bet, that he could walk down the stairs into the foyer on his hands!

Often wobbling disconcertingly as he started to draw the unsuspecting watcher in, Ashurst recalled seeing George perform this feat often three times in half an hour as he successfully augmented his salary with a bit of agile gambling!

Herd was a very fit player and throughout his time with Sunderland, his appearance statistics were phenomenal.

Under the Ian McColl regime, he suffered a bit, having crossed McColl when he was Scotland manager, but despite this, it wasn’t until his final two seasons with the club that he failed to play over thirty games in the league.

He played his last game for Sunderland in a 5-1 defeat at Stamford Bridge on 22 February 1969. The end of that season would see the departure of two more stalwarts from the 1963/1964 promotion side in Mulhall and Hurley, as a golden era appeared to be drawing to a close.

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In total, Herd made 315 appearances in all competitions for Sunderland between April 1961 and February 1969, scoring fifty five goals in the process. He was a fit and sharp inside forward whose work was well appreciated by his teammates and supporters of that era.

He went on to be trainer/coach at Sunderland before signing on as a player/coach at Hartlepool, supporting his former playing colleague Ashurst, who’d taken over as manager. He later had two spells in Kuwait as well as at Newcastle, Darlington, and Middlesborough as a youth coach.

He also had quite a short but successful spell as manager of Queen of the South, who finished runners up to Queens Park during the 1980/1981 Scottish Division Two campaign.

In the mid-1990’s, Herd and his longtime friend Jimmy Montgomery coached Sunderland youths, and for a lad who initially didn’t want to be a professional footballer, it’s probably fair to say that Herd was a real ‘football man.’

George Herd’s career at Sunderland will always be associated with that great team of 1963/1964, but there was more to this Scottish schemer than just one fantastic season.

I leave the final words to the great Charlie Hurley.

George Herd was a very skilful player, also a very honest player, and he was also a very, very nice guy.

Rest in Peace, George Herd.