Sunderland’s ex-boss Peter Reid looks back at BBC documentary Premier Passions

While the club was preparing to leave the beloved Rokeer Park home after a century, the series, which was broadcasted in February and March 1998, also exploded in popularity to take advantage of commercial possibilities opened as the best flight known as the best flight of the game.

When a letter that proposes production from the BBC came down to the club’s PR President Lesley Callaghan’s desk, he and the board saw it as an opportunity to document a “historic moment”.

“After the Taylor report, I felt something important with the growth of the Premier League, TV agreements and the construction of new reasons. [into the Hillsborough tragedy]. It was a chance to be part of it.

“We all felt that there would never be a bigger story to tell. Everyone was working hard for the club and the city.”

At that time and now President Sir Bob Murray CBE said that there was a chance to mark the club as a “new start” on the London Stock Exchange – Monkwearmouth, where darkened miners are run for decades without closing their colliers.

“It was a lot of test times. There was no future in Rokeer Park. It was difficult for people to understand because of the emotion attached to him, but I knew.

“We returned only over 4 million pounds and losing money. Although the ROKER had a capacity of about 22,500, we sold it against Manchester United and Newcastle that season. There was no training area.

“The club was over as an operation. It had to be corrected. It was a chance to increase the series profile.”