10 Players Who Played For Both Newcastle and Sunderland
The tyne-wear derby is an inter-city rivalry in North East England between Newcastle United and Sunderland. It is one of the biggest rivalries in England, but still, there have been some players brave enough to cross the divide. In this article, we will have a look at some of the players who played for both Newcastle and Sunderland.
Here are the ten best players to have played for both Newcastle and Sunderland.
10. Jack Colback
Sunderland – 136 appearances
Newcastle – 102 appearances
Geordie Jack came through the ranks at neighbours Sunderland and appeared over 100 times for the Black Cats. No-one in the world could have envisaged what would unfold over the coming months when Colback netted the second in Sunderland’s 3-0 derby win at St. James’ Park in February 2014.
But after his contract expired that summer, Colback joined Newcastle on a Bosman – making him an instant hate figure on Wearside. He spent 6 seasons under contract with Newcastle out of which 2 seasons were spent on loan at Nottingham Forest, a club he later joined on Free-Transfer in 2020.
9. Chris Waddle
Newcastle – 191 appearances
Sunderland – 7 appearances
Plucked from non-league football by Newcastle in the 1980s, Waddle was widely acknowledged as one of the finest attacking midfielders in Europe. He played alongside Kevin Keegan and Peter Beardsley as Newcastle won promotion to the First Division at the end of 1983–84 season.
After 46 goals in 170 league games for Newcastle, Waddle joined Tottenham Hotspur on 1 July 1985 for a fee of £590,000. He enjoyed a glittering career with Tottenham Hotspur and Marseille, before moving to Sunderland in 1997, a club he supported as a boy. He could not help Sunderland from being relegated from the Premier League at the end of the season and left for Burnley soon after.
8. Paul Bracewell
Sunderland – 272 appearances
Newcastle – 88 appearances
One of the few players to represent both sides and still be fondly remembered by each set of supporters. He is widely regarded among the best players to have played for both Newcastle and Sunderland. Bracewell joined Sunderland for his first spell at the club in 1983. He moved to Everton a year later before making a return to the Roker Park in 1989 for a three-year stay.
Newcastle persuaded him to cross the Tyne in 1992 and he helped them to promotion to the Premier League under Kevin Keegan. He left for a third spell at Sunderland in 1995 before departing for Fulham in 1997.
7. Jeff Clarke
Sunderland – 181 appearances
Newcastle – 124 appearances
One of the best players to have played for both Newcastle and Sunderland, Clarke began his professional career in 1974 with Manchester City. He featured in thirteen league appearances before leaving a year later to join Sunderland. Jeff Clarke made 213 appearances for the Black Cats in a spell that spanned seven years and included a Division Two championship win in 1976 and promotion in the 1979-80 season.
Clarke, who was brought in to replace international centre-half Dave Watson, formed formidable defensive partnerships with first Bobby Moncur and then Shaun Elliott in his seven-year stay on Wearside. Clarke made the switch from Sunderland to Newcastle United in 1982 after injury curtailed his final season with the Black Cats.
Having to overcome the disadvantage of being signed from Sunderland, Jeff settled into the Newcastle side easily and proved to be an outstanding centre-back during what was an exciting mid-eighties period.
6. Bob Moncur
Newcastle – 296 appearances
Sunderland – 86 appearances
Rightly considered as one of Newcastle’s finest-ever captains, Bob ‘Bobby’ Moncur achieved what dozens of skippers have since failed to do – lift a major piece of silverware. He was handed the captain’s armband and helped his club side qualify for Europe
But his greatest achievement for Newcastle was undoubtedly the role he played in the club’s Inter-City Fairs Cup success in 1969 – an eventful run against the likes of Sporting Lisbon and Glasgow Rangers that culminated in a two-leg final against Hungarian giants Ujpesti Dosza, which Newcastle won 6-2 on aggregate.
Moncur won his first cap for Scotland against Holland in Amsterdam in May 1968. He would later captain his country too. Moncur was sold to Sunderland in 1974 after spending 12 years with Newcastle United. He spent two years with the ‘Black Cats’ before joining Carlisle United in 1976.
5. Barry Venison
Sunderland – 205 appearances
Newcastle – 134 appearances
Venison began his career with Sunderland and became the youngest-ever captain in a Wembley Cup Final when he captained the Black Cats in the 1985 League Cup defeat to Norwich. He made nearly 200 appearances on Wearside before Kenny Dalglish paid £250,000 for his services to bring him to Anfield. A huge vote of confidence considering the Reds had just achieved the Double that season.
He was sold to Newcastle in 1992 with two league titles and an FA Cup medal in his pocket. The Magpies were an up-and-coming side under Kevin Keegan’s stewardship and had come up from the Second Division. Venison was instrumental in reviving Newcastle’s fortunes – in 1995 they qualified for Europe for the first time since the 1970s. After two seasons in the new Premier League, he broke the mould in England by sampling the European game, and most likely a bigger pay packet, when Galatasaray bought him in the summer of 1995.
4. Lee Clark
Newcastle – 265 appearances
Sunderland – 89 appearances
Clark came through the ranks at Newcastle in the early 90s and was a big part of the entertainers that were Premier League runners-up in 1996 and 1997. He had two seasons at Sunderland winning the First Division title in 1999. The dynamic midfielder swapped Tyneside for Wearside in 1997 and enjoyed a hugely successful two years in Peter Reid’s team.
Days after clinching their Premier League return, Clark decided to travel to Wembley and support Newcastle in the FA Cup Final against Manchester United. He was seen wearing a t-shirt with a message derogatory towards Black Cats fans ahead of that game. He never played for Sunderland again.
Clark returned to St. James’ Park for a year in the 2004/05 campaign. With all the controversy aside, he is definitely among the best players to have played for both Newcastle and Sunderland.
3. Stan Anderson
Sunderland – 402 appearances
Newcastle – 81 appearances
It takes something pretty special to captain Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, which is why only Stan Anderson has done it. In 1949 he came to Sunderland as an amateur, signing as a professional on his 17th birthday in 1951 and debuting in October 1952 at Roker Park against Portsmouth. A rare homegrown player in the era of the ‘Bank of England’ side of the fifties, Stan scored the first of his 35 Sunderland goals against Newcastle.
He played in two FA Cup semi-finals, but his greatest day came in 1961 when he capped a fabulous display with both goals in a famous FA Cup win over Arsenal, which was watched by over 58,000.
He never wanted to leave Sunderland, but under pressure from manager Alan Brown, he left the club to join Newcastle United in 1963. After captaining Newcastle to promotion, he completed his north-east hat-trick by playing for Middlesbrough who he later managed to promote.
2. Bryan Pop Robson
Newcastle – 206 appearances
Sunderland – 154 appearances
Bryan Robson, better known as ‘Pop’ Robson, is among the finest goal scorers to have graced these shores. The master of the first-time shot, Pop was a centre-forward who came alive in the box. Glancing front post headers, sumptuous volleys and dinking the ball past an outstretched goalkeeper in a one-on-one; it was rare for Robson to take more than three touches before laying it off or taking an early shot and catching the goalkeeper off guard.
Robson joined Newcastle United as a 17-year-old in 1962, and he made a goal-scoring debut against Charlton Athletic before his 18th birthday. His goals helped Newcastle win the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, which remains the club’s last piece of major silverware.
Robson would be Newcastle’s top scorer for three consecutive seasons, up until a £120,000 move to West Ham in 1971. He left West Ham in 1974 for his hometown club of Sunderland, where he spent two seasons, was the top scorer in both and helped the club achieve promotion back to the First Division.
Checkout: 10 Greatest Newcastle United Players Ever
1. Len Shackleton
Newcastle – 57 appearances
Sunderland – 348 appearances
Dubbed the “Clown Prince of Soccer”, Len Shackleton was one of English football’s most prominent entertainers, bamboozling defenders and delighting supporters throughout the forties and fifties.
He joined Newcastle United from Bradford Park Avenue for £13,000 fee in October 1946. He went some way to justifying his price tag on his debut, bagging six goals in the Magpies’ 13-0 drubbing of Newport County. The St James’ Park faithful responded to Shackleton’s flicks and tricks with the desired applause, but a series of arguments with the board preceded his departure in February 1948.
Although Shackleton moved up an entire division, he didn’t have to travel far from his previous home. Sunderland then labelled the “Bank of England” club due to their lavish spending on players, broke the transfer record to prise the attacker away from their local rivals, splashing out £20,050 to add his name to their increasingly star-studded roster.
In terms of the goals-to-games ratio, it was money well spent. “Shack” found the net precisely one hundred times for the Black Cats, but despite owning one of England’s most precocious talents, Sunderland’s expensively assembled side did not lift any silverware. They came desperately close in 1950, finishing just one point shy of champions Portsmouth. Billy Murray’s men also reached the FA Cup semi-final in 1956 and repeated the feat in 1957, but for all his skills and wizardry, Shackleton’s trophy cabinet remained bare.
Checkout: 10 Greatest Sunderland Players Ever