Another Niall In The Coffin

(First published in Percy Main v Alnwick Town programme 07/05/2011)

When I was young, April 23^rd was notable for being both Shakespeare’s birthday and death day (1564 and 1616 respectively), as well as St. George’s Day. This year, it was also marketed as Easter Eve (a phrase I’d never heard before), the second session of a four day public holiday weekend bender, by both pubs and supermarkets, concerned with turning Easter in to another orgy of overindulgence in glasses and on plates. I didn’t realise just how much binge drinking had touched the national consciousness until I met my mate Mackem Steve for a pint that early evening.

I came back from Percy Main after our thumpingly good 2-2 with Ashington Colliers, while he returned from sunderland, to meet for a few beers and watch Chelsea v West Ham. Well, that was the plan, but the bar was heaving with the wrecked fallout of all day sessioners; blokes bladdered on Carling and women slaughtered on ice cold Rose wine, which appears to have supplanted alcopops as the drink of choice for the undiscerning female palate, while tired and bored children screamed and whinged. The place was in uproar, which was good in a way as Steve couldn’t tell me about the Mackems trouncing Wigan 4-1.

Given the choice I’d rather have met him the week after, when Fulham banjoed them 3-0, but I’m not telepathic enough to pick out their unexpected home defeats and arrange my social life round them. To be fair to Steve, he isn’t one of the bitter Mackems, having been watching them long enough to remark when Bob Stokoe was appointed in autumn 1972; “we should never get a Mag to manage us.” Perhaps if he’d said this in 1987 when Stokoe took over from McMenemy to pilot their drop in to the third division, rather than 7 months before they won the FA Cup, he could have been right.

Interestingly, the caution Steve espoused as an 8 year old is accepted as truth by most Mackem supporters these days. Lee Clark, Don Hutchison and now Steve Bruce are seen as being the evil offspring of McMenemy and Stokoe, who are regarded a collection of vindictive, vengeful Mags only interested in destroying sunderland. As the annual clamour for “lifelong black cat fan” Martin O’Neill to take over at SoS grows ever louder, it is interesting to remember just how fickle these lot are, not just in their crowds, but in their affections. Back in 2009, Darren Bent was seen as being the saviour of the club and Steve Bruce (or Brewse as they would have it at the time) was no longer a Geordie from Walker, but a Northumbrian from Corbridge as that’s where he was born. Now the fact he was safely ensconced in the parental home on the Fossway by 5 days old is shouted loud whenever Corbridge is mentioned. Also, Ellis Short is regularly exhorted to do the decent thing and sack Bruce and, almost astonishingly, Niall Quinn as well, as the genial lush is seen by many red and whites to be problem drinking in the last chance saloon of their affections.

Quinn, the £1m per annum man of the people is an interesting case. When I saw the Mackems lose 1-0 to Norwich in the second ever game at SoS in August 2007, Quinn was hated by the fans. The chanting against him was savage, relentless, personal and xenophobic; in a sense when he said he “despised” sunderland fans earlier this year, he was only echoing their previous and current opinions of him. Strangely they temporarily came round to him, like they did with Bob Stokoe, and then venerated Quinn when, in the company of a collection of discredited Irish property speculators, he bought the club from the hated Bob Murray, who in the Mackem universe is now rebranded as a proper local fan.

It’s all swings and roundabouts with that lot; if the Mackems get more points than Newcastle over these last 3 games, Bruce and Quinn will be heroes again. If they don’t, the summer of discontent on Wearside will be a fraught one. At least Newcastle fans are constant and reliable; 40,000 season tickets sold by the end of April and everyone hates Ashley and Pardew. Loyalty and consistency; two words the Mackems just don’t get.