In the modern era, received social media wisdom holds that to display any form of interest in the fortunes of your football club’s local rivals ensures that you will be labelled as obsessed. This is plainly ridiculous. I can’t really see a comparable attitude taking off in any other realm of life; for instance, would it be advisable for Labour to ignore every policy fiasco and underhand act of despicable evil by the Tories in case they are labelled obsessed? Of course not; that would be ridiculous. However, these touchy, self-perceived victims of hopeless players and even worse governance should apparently be granted indemnity from having the mickey taken out of them. Frankly, it bothers me not one iota if I am labelled as obsessed, as someone needs to tell the truth about why Sunderland’s demise is the best thing to have happened since they last went down to the third in 1987.
I
state quite categorically, for the avoidance of doubt, that I am absolutely
elated Sunderland have been relegated for the second season running. The
suffering engendered by every single one of those 6 shameful defeats in a row
by them was worth it, just to be able to laugh loudly and uproariously at their
fate. In all seriousness, I hope the club goes out of business and that they
reform in the Durham Alliance with Jack Rodwell as player manager, but my
unbridled delight at their on-going disintegration has nothing to do with
regional rivalry and everything to do with the sordid, evil nature of the
institution that Sunderland AFC allowed itself to become. The names Margaret
Byrne, Paolo Di Canio and Adam Johnson are the reason why I’ve said this in the
past and why I’m saying it again now. A trio of former employees whose legacy
will remain as an indelible stain on the reputation of a club formed back in
1879, who have been, to borrow a phrase from Nye Bevan, lower than vermin for
the past 5 years and counting.
Obviously,
there is the natural feeling of rampant schadenfreude
when one’s noisy neighbours get taken down a peg or two. In that sense, every
single moment from the appointment of David Moyes has been a glorious pantomime
of incompetence, which has seen Sunderland AFC and all associated with her
lurching downhill like a runaway express, driven by a plastered Darron Gibson with the accelerator jammed on full,
careering out of control with ever greater rapidity as the force of events
overtook them. Can it really be less than 2 years since that plane flew over
SJP and the banner appeared on the Tyne Bridge, supposedly inflicted on us in
some weak and desperate acts of supposed revenge? Well marras, how did that
work out for you eh? Never mind; you’ve still got your 6 In a Row DVDs to fall back on. You can even line the pockets of
the A Love Supreme merchandising
dynasty still further by investing in one of their relegation celebration
t-shirts. Don’t believe me? Check out this link -: https://www.a-love-supreme.com/product-page/i-m-still-here
It
wasn’t quite a “where were you when Kennedy was shot?” moment, but I’ll
remember for the rest of my life that I was applauding my beloved Benfield off
the pitch after a satisfying 2-0 victory at Ashington’s sun-kissed Woodhorn
Lane ground when Burton Albion scored their second goal at the Stadium of Shite
and effectively relegated Sunderland. The one disappointment was that Darren
Bent, a Sunderland legend driven out of the club after his mother was racially
abused by fans of the club, only got the equaliser and not the winner. “Enjoy
Burton” they crowed when Newcastle were relegated in 2016. Indeed we did, by
collecting 6 points from the Brewers on route to winning the title and then taking
great pleasure from seeing Nigel Clough’s side grinding the Mackems’ faces
underfoot; trampling them deeper into the dirt. Pushing the one-time Bank of
England club ever closer to oblivion. Those poor deluded saps phoning Gary
Bennett on Radio Newcastle to express despair or search for straws of
consolation had me in hysterics, especially the clown who said the very worst
thing about his club was the fact all the stewards were Mags. You couldn’t make
this sort of thing up.
It
seems the one thing Newcastle United and Sunderland have in common is that they
both got out of football’s second tier after a solitary season. The main
difference is that Newcastle have never played in the third division, as was;
the closest we came was in 1992, when we avoided demotion by winning our last 2
games to finish on 52 points. With 2 games to go, Sunderland have amassed a
paltry, pitiful 34 points, having tasted defeat a scarcely believable 14 times
on home soil this season. No wonder they have been relegated to the third tier
for the second time. I can still remember just where I was that glorious May Sunday
afternoon in 1987 when
they took the tumble first time around.
After
Lawrie McMenemy had done most of the spadework, Bob Stokoe, the former
so-called Messiah on Wearside, came in and oversaw the Mackems being relegated on
away goals against Gillingham. It was the day after Coventry had beaten Spurs
in the Cup final. Radio 5 hadn’t been born then, so I followed it on a transistor
with a loose aerial from my kitchen in South Harrow on BBC Radio Kent. Goodness
how I laughed, in between grimaces as another blast of white noise aural scree
assailed my ears. It is always a regret of mine that I wasn’t with the
estimated 2,000 Newcastle fans who made the trip to Joker Park to cheer on the
Gills that day. Despite the dreadful statue erected in his memory, which makes him
look like a predatory, priapic paedophile emerging from the bushes in a
playground that is outside their ground, Sunderland never forgave Stokoe for
taking them down. The fans boycotted an FA Cup tie against Birmingham (they
lost) played a couple of days after he died and Newcastle United hosted the
reception after his funeral. After all he’d won the FA Cup with us first. They
say what goes around comes around, so Sunderland will be able to visit the
Priestfield Stadium again next season. Not to mention Peel Park; home of
Accrington Stanley. Exactly.
Historically,
I would contend that in many ways, Sunderland are far less of an establishment
club than Newcastle United. Obviously, things changed for NUFC once the
vulgarity of new money, in the shape of the demotic Hall and Shepherd dynasties
and then the barbarous barrow boy Ashley, came into the reckoning. Before that,
Newcastle United’s main boardroom players came from the landed gentry and the
legal profession in the main, with the austere values of Scottish
Presbyterianism at the heart of many of the attitudes and decisions made on
Barrack Road over the decades. Sunderland, despite being formed by James Allan,
a schoolmaster, were always a club that looked to self-made men of dubious
personal morals to pay their bills; Colin Veitch would never have fitted in
with that lot. Witness the difference between Wearside’s Bank of England club
and their infamous catalogue of illegal payments in the latter half of the
1950s and Newcastle United’s contemptuous view of players as hirelings and
errand boys, most notably Frank Brennan for having the temerity to open up a
sports shop in competition with Stan Seymour and George Eastham, who took the
club to the High Court to extricate himself from an indeterminate sentence of
servitude. The Magpies begrudged paying wages, so they were unlikely to stuff
brown envelopes with non-sequentially numbered bills. As late as 1990 Gordon
McKeag, the county rugby player, Old Novocastrian and Gosforth lawyer, described
Newcastle United as “the family silver,” without blinking an eye. During the 1926 General Strike, Sunderland
provided relief for starving pitmen and shipyard workers, as well as their
families. Newcastle United would probably had had them all rounded up and shot
for being Bolsheviks. Goodness only knows how Jack Charlton was able to loan
his club car to striking pitmen for flying picket duty during the 1984 NUM
strike.
Even
in March of this year, Sunderland showed their compassionate side by opening up
the ground for homeless people to sleep in on the coldest nights of the year.
Thankfully, the first team were away to Millwall so there wasn’t a match ticket
included in the deal. There is absolutely no way I could imagine Newcastle
United engaging in such charitable actions, even if the club have been
commendable in their support of the Newcastle West End foodbank, which provides
a lifeline for some of the most marginalised and vulnerable people in society. Yet
it is Sunderland, like Everton and ironically Celtic, whose supporters see
themselves as being part of a people’s club, existing outside of the mainstream
and acting as a beacon for the poor and downtrodden masses, though Sunderland’s
support see themselves as an avowedly right-wing club, dedicated to
authoritarian populist policies rather than principled concepts of social
justice.
Ten
years and more ago, the brief honeymoon period of the Drumaville Project,
engineered and exploited by Niall Quinn, brought Sunderland a strange identity
as a semi Irish club, that was the worst case of cultural misappropriation
since The Black and White Minstrel Show
or St Pauli FC wishing their fans a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day on Twitter. The uneasy peace brokered by Quinn and his
investor pals after replaced Bob Murray couldn’t last, not in an area that is
still proud of having fought so tigerishly, though unsuccessfully, for
Cromwell’s forces against the Royalists from Tyneside. On my first visit to
their ground, a 0-1 loss to Norwich City in August 1997, Quinn was booed all
game, with many of the insults in his direction focussing on his ethnicity and
religion. Despite instructions from Roman Catholic pulpits in the South Tyne
area in the 50s and 60s that Sunderland rather than Newcastle were the team
with God on their side, Wearsiders have long embraced a simplified creed of Orangeism
as a doctrine of repression and intolerance that fits snugly with their
authoritarian populist ideals. This is the area that boasted the highest BNP
vote in the region. This is the town that voted massively for Brexit. The
streets of Hendon and Pallion are the ones where the vile, disingenuous Justice for Chelsey campaign, which
fully exploited the tensions created by Celtic’s visit for a pre-season
friendly (ahem!) in July 2017, gained traction. Bad schools, bad housing, lousy
lifestyle options, zero social care, few work options and little or no family cohesion
have reinforced the collective Wearside false consciousness, whereby refugees
and asylum seekers are the ones blamed for the disintegration of the pillars
that support everyday life, rather than the capitalist system.
Sunderland
and its hinterland is a living, breathing Sociology textbook, where every index
of social deprivation is turned up to 11. When every avenue of self-improvement
is closed to you, the tendency to become insular and spikily protective, even when your own supporters are soiling themselves in the stands, is a
simple choice. Their reasoning is that they can slag their club off, but nobody
else is allowed to. Sunderland have fans who claim that relegation to League 1
is a price worth paying for 6 in a row. Others refuse to protest against Ellis
Short, because that is the sort of thing Newcastle fans do. Apparently stoic
silence for an hour, then leaving the ground early to whine and twist about
things on the internet is a more effective way to save their club. Honestly,
they really do believe that. With that kind of wrongheaded thinking, you can
understand how Newcastle United have been installed as first choice folk devils
on Wearside, causing endless panics and social media meltdowns. Sunderland, in
response to some daft Twitter posts by mischievous Mags, cancelled all cash
turnstiles for the visit of Norwich City, resulting in their most important
game of the season having their lowest crowd. The Burton Albion and
Wolverhampton Wanderers games had ticket sale conditions as stringent as FIFA
have for the World Cup final; all because someone got cold feet at the thought
of 100 beered up Geordies turning up for a giggle at their rivals’ expense.
With the club £130 million or whatever in the red to Ellis Short, you’d think
they would have welcomed the income. Instead a moral panic ensues because some 15 year old NUFC fans broke a couple of seats at an Under 23 game and they feared a re-enactment of the Peterloo Riots.
watching tonight
Warming the Bed
watching tonight
hi we are a couple wanting to be watched screwing tonight in newcastle
Hi there, would love to watch you tonight. Drop me a line at
rokerlad@hotmail.com
SHOPPING
If Dave the Dogger is reading this, I’d like to
tell him he was the very first person I thought of when the Mackems went down.
I really hope he was doing what he likes best of all; watching…
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