The mysterious case of Chris Black

Oxford United 0-0 Doncaster Rovers

Nationwide Division Three

Saturday 27th March 2004

Imagine wanting to be a professional footballer and being good enough for it to become a reality!

You've progressed through the academy at a top flight club, signed a professional contract and featured several times on the substitutes bench for the first team before finally making your Premier League debut - all this well before your 21st birthday!

Everything is looking positive and a career in professional football seems certain.

For the next stage in your development, your boss - a straight-talking Yorkshireman who has managed at the World Cup, sends you out on loan to a lower division club to gain experience. Yet within days of making the move, you decide that professional football isn't for you and you quit the game altogether.

Chris Black up in the air (Photo: Unknown)

It might sound bizarre but this exact scenario was pretty much what happened with Chris Black - a 21-year-old midfielder who came through Sunderland's academy system, made his professional debut under Mick McCarthy in the Premier League, joined Doncaster Rovers on loan towards the end of the following season and then simply vanished into thin air for a few days before quitting football altogether.

Nearly two decades on, Black's decision to effectively 'retire' when he could quite possibly have enjoyed a decent career remains as mystifying to many fans as the curiosity which exists regarding him.

His one appearance for Donny came in a goalless draw away at Oxford United - the club's first ever visit to the Kassam Stadium which had been constructed a few years earlier.

Rovers, very much riding on the crest of a wave following promotion back to the Football League a year earlier - and backed by 2,000 supporters at this match, created the better openings during the 90 minutes with Michael McIndoe, Mark Albrighton and Dave Mulligan all being thwarted by debutant Oxford 'keeper Simon Cox who was deputising for the injured Andy Woodman.

Chris Brown (pictured) also has a shot saved by Oxford's debutant 'keeper (Photo: Unknown).

Having joined on loan a couple of days earlier, Black had gone straight into the starting line-up, replacing Ricky Ravenhill, and put in a solid enough, albeit not spectacular, debut performance.

The Sunderland youngster certainly didn't have a poor game and, besides, a point was more than acceptable because it was another small step towards securing an unlikely second successive promotion. Dave Penney, once on the books at Oxford in their Manor Ground days, would have also been happier with the point than his opposite number, the newly-appointed but controversial figure of Doncaster-born Graham Rix, who knew he had a job on his hands to arrest Oxford's awful malaise which had seen them go from promotion candidates in the early weeks of the New Year to faltering failures by this point.

However, somewhere along the line, for some reason, Chris Black decided enough was enough.

Not to be seen at Rovers' next training session on the following Monday and with his mobile phone switched off for the next few days, concerns grew over his whereabouts. An appeal was put out asking anyone who'd seen him to get in touch with the club though it was published on the morning of April 1st - leading many to believe it might be a wind up as opposed to genuine!

Chris Black gets ready for a ball into the box (Photo: Unknown).

Eventually, contact was made and 'personal issues' were cited for his absence but he never again wore a Doncaster Rovers shirt, nor a Sunderland one, nor one for any other professional team for that matter as he decided a quiet 'normal' life was more up his street instead of kicking a ball around.

Chris Brown, who was also on loan from Sunderland at the same time, later indicated on an episode of the 'Undr The Cosh' podcast (skip to 1hr 3mins), that maybe his former team-mate just didn't have the right psyche or mental make up for professional game? There is a stark difference between youth and first team football, sometimes you have to want it more than anything else in the world, and clearly, Chris Black just didn't want to pursue that career option.

Details of his life after football are sketchy though it's believed he returned to his native North-East, worked in a clothes shop named Cruise in Newcastle for a while - combining it with playing football on a part-time basis in the Northern League (Step 5 of the non-league pyramid), before later going into office-based work in the local area.

The story just proves that football isn't for everyone...

A rare photo in existence of Chris Black's football career (Photo: Unknown).

A young Adebayo Akinfenwa was a handful (Photo: Unknown).

Rovers apply some pressure (Photo: Unknown).

Another attack, another header, but still goalless... (Photo: Unknown).