Every club has its legends.

Its greatest players from its greatest teams associated with its greatest triumphs.

And for a club like Sunderland whose greatest eras - at least, to date - are tinged with sepia, many of those legends can seem distant figures, if they are remembered at all, to supporters brought up in the age of Premier League razzamatazz, or even in the 1980s and 1970s when football was still regarded as sport rather than an offshoot of the entertainment industry.

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Gary Rowell, Gary Bennett, Marco Gabbiadini, Kevin Ball, Kevin Phillips, and Niall Quinn, are heroes to those who watched them at the peak of their powers at Roker Park or the Stadium of Light.

They are the players whose posters adorned Wearside teenagers’ bedroom walls and, as football became increasingly commercialised, whose names were proudly emblazoned on the back of the latest replica shirts.

But different criteria apply when considering a list of the club’s all-time greats.

Jimmy Montgomery is worthy of a place on any such list. Sunderland’s record appearance-maker left the club in 1977 but his save at Wembley which helped deliver FA Cup glory four years earlier is an iconic moment in the history of the competition and, crucially, was captured on film ensuring it is there to be savoured by subsequent generations, meaning his name and face are still familiar to fans aged under 50 who never saw him play.

However the list must also include players such as First Division title-winner and FA Cup-winner Raich Carter from the 1930s, the club’s all-time record league goalscorer and 1913 title-winner Charlie Buchan, along with Ned Doig and Jimmy Miller who were part of the Sunderland sides that won the league title four times in the decade between 1892 and 1902.

Only the oldest Sunderland fans alive today will have any memory of Carter in a red and white shirt. It is a safe bet that there is no-one still alive who remembers seeing Buchan, while Doig and Miller belong not merely to a different age but a different era.

It is no surprise that the most assured route to a place among the greats is to be a part of a team that wins major honours.

But there are exceptions to every rule.

And Charlie Hurley, who died on Monday at the age of 87, was an exception.

The tough-as-teak Republic of Ireland international defender did not win a trophy during his 12-year stay at Sunderland in which he made more than 400 appearances, although he did captain the side that won promotion to the top flight in 1963-64.

However, he undoubtedly deserves his place at the top table alongside the greatest players ever to have worn the red and white stripes.

Dubbed ‘The King’ by supporters during his playing pomp during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, and voted Player of the Century when the club celebrated its centenary in 1979, Charlie was idolised by the fans who grew up watching him from the terraces.

It was a love he returned - with interest.

I was fortunate enough to interview Charlie on four or five occasions, usually over the phone, and it didn't matter what I had planned to ask him about, the conversation would inevitably turn to his relationship with the supporters and the memories would come flooding back.

The chants of ‘Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!’ whenever Sunderland won a corner, as he pioneered the practice - now commonplace - of a centre-half coming forward for a set-piece.

The rousing reception he received in 1973 as he made his first return to Roker Park as Reading manager for an FA Cup fourth round tie - and the travelling Sunderland fans who laid siege to the players’ entrance at Elm Park after their team had won the replay to take an early step on what would turn out to be the Road to Wembley, and refused to move until their hero emerged to sign autographs.

And the red carpet treatment he was accorded when he travelled with Sunderland to Ireland, and specifically his birthplace Cork, as an ambassador for the club’s pre-season tour in 2007 when Roy Keane was manager and Niall Quinn chairman.

Keane is not a man who is easily impressed but his respect for Charlie was clear for all to see, while Quinn described him this week as ‘a great man’ and and an ‘inspiration’ to Irish footballers.

Among those Irish footballers he inspired was a young Martin O’Neill, with the sight of Charlie in red and white was enough to convince the schoolboy to adopt Sunderland as his team, and when O’Neill became manager in 2011 his idol called to wish him good luck.

Four years earlier, a beaming Charlie had been present at Kenilworth Road - close to his Hertfordshire home - to see Keane’s side thrash Luton Town 5-0 to overtake Birmingham City on the final day of the season and secure promotion to the Premier League as champions.

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And in November 2016, a month after he turned 80, Charlie was on hand to see the iron gates which bore his name and which once stood at the entrance to the club’s former training base, installed outside the Stadium of Light.

Sunderland marked the occasion with a 3-0 win against Hull City, while Charlie was was reunited on the pitch with members of that 1963-64 promotion-winning side before kick-off.

It is fitting that his final visit to Wearside should see him cheered to the rafters one last time by fans, young and old, who knew they were in the presence of a true legend, an all-time great.