Sunderland Greats: George Holley
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George Holley was born at Seaham Harbour in 1885 — a time when the club he would later play for in Sunderland AFC was only six years old and the Football League was yet to exist.
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In an era where the future of many of his school friends would encompass a lifetime in the pits of County Durham, Holley’s path was to be football.
Playing for local Seaham teams in non-league football, he was spotted by Sunderland’s scouts and signed in 1904 as an eighteen-year-old. He soon made his debut away to Sheffield Wednesday in December 1904, scoring in a 1-1 draw, and followed that up by scoring the opening goal on his home debut during a 3-2 win over Preston North End just a few days later.
Holley was off and running, and in a glimpse of what was to come, he scored ten goals in just sixteen appearances for a Sunderland side that finished in fifth place in the First Division. That haul of goals in his debut season left him as the club’s leading scorer for 1904/1905.
Then-Sunderland manager Alex Mackie had brought the First Division title back to Wearside in 1902 and handed Holley his debut, but by the time his debut season had come to an end, Mackie resigned.
This opened the door for the manager who was to become synonymous with Holley’s career from that point — the legendary Bob Kyle.
Sunderland had consistently been one of the top teams in the country under Mackie, yet struggled for the first few seasons of Kyle’s reign. However, this didn’t prevent Holley from developing his goalscoring skills though. By 1908 he was the club’s leading scorer, with twenty goals in all competitions, and until 1913/1914, he was our leading scorer for five out of seven seasons.
Holley was a prolific inside forward who hit twenty goals in a season on four occasions, which included eleven hat-tricks and 159 goals in total. He was a skilful player who could run with the ball and was a lethal finisher to boot.
5 December 1908, St James’ Park, Newcastle.
The home team would be crowned Football League champions that season, but just over seventy years before another Seaham-born player was to enjoy arguably his finest hour in a Sunderland shirt at St James’ Park, Holley was about to have one of many.
With the game level at 1-1 at half time, he put Sunderland ahead two minutes after the restart and within twenty minutes had registered a hat-trick.
He and his Sunderland teammates repeatedly ran riot against the Newcastle defence and by the seventy-seventh minute, the Lads were 1-9 up, after which the score remain unchanged until the final whistle.
Over a century later, it remains our biggest win registered in the Football League, and this was the season that Bob Kyle’s team started to show the rest of the country that they had something about them, eventually ending the season in third place in the league.
Further third-place finishes followed, with Holley now breaking into the England team, and he hit eight goals in just ten appearances for the Three Lions — the most any player has scored for England while playing for Sunderland.
There was more to come for Holley and Sunderland in 1913, and after a shocking start to the season, the side began to win, win and win again, ending the season as Football League champions for the fifth time. This was not all, because before the title had been secured, Sunderland also reached the F.A. Cup Final.
Despite being granted the opportunity to win the first part of what would’ve been an incredible league and cup double, Holley had been injured in the weeks before the final.
He was due to miss the final itself, but his replacement Walter Tinsley had an attack of nerves on the big day. Thus, with his knee bandaged and ankle strapped, Holley started the game against Aston Villa at Crystal Palace, which Sunderland lost 0-1.
Holley then returned for the final three league games after the final — in which we secured the victories needed to bring the league title back to Wearside — and he was our leading scorer during the following season. He was still only twenty eight years old when the First World War broke out, and just as World War Two curtailed the careers of many of the biggest names in our history, it was also very much the case for Holley.
He was a prolific scorer, and only three other players have scored more goals for Sunderland: Dave Halliday, Charlie Buchan and Bobby Gurney. If he’d been able to keep on playing at his peak, there’s chance that he could’ve reached a total that would’ve even been beyond the reach of Gurney.
He was one of the best and most important strikers in the club’s history — local born and scorer of a hat-trick in the biggest league win registered by Sunderland at our greatest rivals.