They hit the post and missed chances. Tony Norman pulled off a couple of outstanding saves. And then, just as we’d begun to believe we’d hang on, Dennis Wise equalised with four minutes remaining. We all knew what that meant: we were knackered, and they’d steamroller us in extra-time.

But then a corner, a last chance. Brian Atkinson slung it in, Gordon Armstrong rose and met it was a resounding header. From the other end of the pitch, we could see the trajectory, could see the diving Dave Beasant wasn’t going to reach it, could see it was going in. Except, and I remember thinking this quite clearly, it wasn’t in: it was taking an awfully long time.

In the Argentine blues tradition they say the music is in the pause: that was the pause. The Fulwell End was dead silent. And that, of course, is how you judge an atmosphere, not by the noise, but by the pauses – for if 25,000 people are silent, it’s because they’re all focused on the same thing. Nobody is chatting or coughing or yawning. They’re all watching.

And eventually, the ball dropped in. Only later, when television had shown what out distorted perception could not, did we see that Armstrong had been 22 yards out when he met the ball. As the final whistle blew Crosby stood amid the cacophony, as though bemused on the touchline, his great brooding nose seemingly bigger than ever. From nowhere a huge red-and-white banner, maybe 50 ft by 20 ft, appeared and was paraded onto the pitch. And then, as if spontaneously – for who could have thought of such a line in the circumstances, never mind transmitted it to those around them – came the immortal chant, “Malcolm Crosby’s red and white hankie.”

Even then, though, it was apparent that Roker Park was past its sell-by date, small and crumbling, and in 1997, Sunderland moved to the Stadium of Light, their admirable new home. Three years ago, I went back to the old Roker Park, which is now a housing estate. I turned by the newsagents down Givens Street just over the road from where the Roker End had been. The streets there are typical of the early twentieth century, imposing and sturdy, unwaveringly respectable, with between them the backlanes that allowed for coal and such-like to be delivered out of sight without offending anyone’s sense of decency.

I passed Cooper Street, where George Reynolds, the notorious safe-cracker and former Darlington chairman grew up, and then the back lane where, between the walls topped with shards of broken glass, my dad taught me to ride a bike. Then I came to Appley Terrace, where my dad grew up and where my gran lived until her death. From her back garden – even from inside the house if the crowd was big enough or the wind was right – you could hear the roars from Roker Park so clearly that there was no need to check the final score. In the old days, as she would regularly tell me, she’d open the doors of the garage so fans could park their bikes inside, leaving a box on a shelf for them to drop sixpence into as a fee.

We’d regularly go up there for tea on a Saturday, and when I was five my dad started taking me to watch the last 20 minutes of games, sneaking in when they opened the gates to let people leave. Even after I started going to games with mates – and so re-awakening the old Fulwell End-Roker End debate - we’d still meet up at my gran’s afterwards. A match wouldn’t have been a match without an overmilky coffee and some homemade ginger biscuits to follow.

My gran died shortly after Christmas 1995. She was cremated on Jan 6, the day Sunderland played away at Manchester United in the third-round of the FA Cup. In the afternoon following the funeral, my dad drove me back to university. As we passed the Harbour View pub at the far end of Givens Street, Nicky Butt gave United the lead. There was, I think, almost a sense of relief. Neither of us would have said it, but I suspect we had both dreamed of some kind of send-off; this at least punctured those hopes early, and let them gently deflate.

But then, in quick succession, Steve Agnew and Craig Russell scored. There may have been a snort at the ridiculousness of it all, but otherwise we were silent, recognising what this could mean. But football, of course, does not hand out sentimental favours. Eric Cantona equalised with a late header and United won the replay. As we lingered on the terraces following that 3-0 victory over Everton 18 months later, my dad in the Roker and me in the Fulwell, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” drifting from the tannoy speakers, it wasn’t just a football ground to which we were saying goodbye.