We are just about a month short of the 44th anniversary of an event that brought great joy to the East End of London and none at all to those large pockets of the north-eastern end of England that support Sunderland.

Now 44-minus-a-month is not especially catchy as anniversaries go. But come Saturday afternoon, Eastenders would dearly like to see an improbable 2012 equivalent of what occurred on October 19 1968. And Sunderland-following north-easterners will be hoping for no such thing. The scoreline that day was West Ham 8 Sunderland 0.



It has occurred to me more than once over the years that this was not at face value a Sunderland line-up you would expect to surrender to such a hammering ...

Montgomery; Irwin, Hurley, Palmer, Harvey; Suggett, Porterfield, Herd; Harris, Brand, Hughes

... just as this admittedly useful Hammers side hardly seems invincible ...

Ferguson; Bonds, Stephenson, Moore, Charles; Redknapp, Boyce, Peter; Brooking, Hurst, Sissons

But then we were robbed.

The key name in the West Ham team is that of Geoff, later Sir Geoffrey, Hurst for he scored six of the goals. And the first of them, also the Hammers' first, was punched home - as he later confessed.

No wonder that Martin Smith, a West Ham-supporting sports reporter, stated in The Daily Telegraph five years ago: "Sunderland fans of a certain age are still traumatised." Who knows how the game might have gone had the referee spotted the hand of a future knight? Perhaps a draw - West Ham had been struggling to overcome defensive-minded visitors in preceding games - or even a narrow away win.

As my friend Pete Sixsmith wrote, tongue in cheek, at Salut! Sunderland when recalling the various games he had witnessed between the two clubs: "Monty [the Sunderland keeper Jimmy Montgomery] and his fellow defenders were so demoralised and shocked by this blatant cheating that they took the moral high ground and refused to participate in the game. It shows how poor the Hammers were as they failed to score more than eight."

Neither of us was at Upton Park in 1968 to have first-hand memories of just how bad Sunderland were or, indeed, how good the rampant Hammers must - despite Pete's irony - have been. But we have seen subsequent games there when our team looked for all the world as if intent on faring just as badly while somehow limiting the deficit to two or three.

And, between us, we have seen some storming displays: Pete particularly relished a 2-1 win that sealed the Championship title for Sunderland in 2005. There was a 3-2 FA Cup replay victory back in 1992, when Sunderland went on to be beaten finalists at Wembley.

We both missed the last visit, a 3-0 win in May 2011 with the Hammers already relegated, but were present in 1999 when our team very nearly went top of the Premier League, leading through a Kevin Phillips goal scored even after the dismissal of Steve Bould, only for Trevor Sinclair to snatch a last-ditch equaliser to bring us down to earth.

Saturday's encounter, I confidently predict, will not end 8-0. How it will go is anyone's guess. West Ham have enjoyed a better start with seven points from four; we have just three after draws in each of our three fixtures and I would certainly not rule out a fourth.

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