The Parting Glass

The very first time I set foot in the Stadium of Shite was August 30^th 1997, the day before Diana Spencer a acheté la ferme à Paris, to see the third game ever played there. After a scoreless friendly with Ajax and a 3-1 win over Manchester City in the debut competitive fixture, I’m happy to report Norwich City took the points with a Darryl Sutch strike in the 76^th minute that brought a smile to my cruel but terribly attractive features and was the difference between the two sides. Around the same time, other teams were opening new football grounds at Bolton Wanderers, Derby County and Stoke City; in an attempt to throw fresh light on these projects, a national football magazine (I forget whether it was 442 or When Saturday Comes) got supporters of these teams’ rivals to cast a critical eye on these new palatial facilities. Hence a Vale fan went to Stoke, a Forest follower investigated Derby and so forth. I was the one commissioned to visit Albania on Wear to provide a critical commentary on this alarming edifice.

It’s almost 15 years ago now and my memories of that happy weekend have dimmed; I do recall the ground had almost no discernible features inside or outside to help you find which stand or seat you were supposed to sit in, but it didn’t really matter as the crowd was 16k under capacity. Back then the attendance was about 26,000, though the swathes of unoccupied seats were vivid red rather than the tawdry, faded pinky orange they are now and that the locals were most unhappy with the result; a third defeat in four games that left them perilously close to the Division 1 (as was) relegation spots, following their demotion from the Premier in May 1997.

While manager Peter Reid was the target for much of the ire of the self-proclaimed greatest fans in world football, it has to be said that the player receiving the fiercest criticism was Mr. Charity himself, the St. Theresa of Saipan, who would later apparently act as the saviour of Wearside and who has just left the employment of the club he helped to purchase in 2006, Niall Quinn. Repeated volleys of contempt from the thinly populated terracing seemed to focus on the man’s drinking habits, though with hindsight it is more amusing to recall the person who attempted to model this club as being the natural home for Irish people wanting to take in a game of soccer and a weekend in Newcastle, endlessly being referred to as a “Fenian bastard” and “IRA shithouse” by the notoriously fickle and intolerant indigenous followers of safc.

I’m not a great student of the fortunes of sunderland, but I’m aware that in the 5 years that followed this shambolic afternoon in the sun, Quinn somehow reinvented himself as a man of the people and a popular player. Much of the good will he garnered is related to his supposed charitable largesse, whereby a 2002 benefit game was played between sunderland and Ireland at SoS, with Quinn eventually donating the takings to charity. It was a wonderful gesture and so much in contrast to a story I’d heard about a certain sunderland player demanding £2k to hand out some 5-a-side trophies to young offenders on a rehabilitation and reintegration programme at the Raich Carter Centre in Hendon just before the 2002 game alluded to above. Suffice to say, this player, famous for his popularity among fans, was replaced with Paul Collingwood, the Durham cricketer, who happily did the job for free.

However, let’s get back to Niall Quinn; the last time I saw him in the red and white was during an embarrassingly easy 2-0 win for Newcastle in September 2002 at St. James’ Park. Quinn came on as a substitute and looked, to me (an Ireland fan remember) how he’d always appeared; slow, laborious, ponderous and with a dreadful first touch. Soon after this game had passed him by, he retired on October 19^th 2002, allegedly to become a coach. This sinecure was short lived as Peter Reid’s sacking ushered in the calamitous Howard Wilkinson regime, where Quinn found himself to be extraneous to requirements.

After 4 years back home, necking  black stuff, playing the horses and turning out for Robert Emmets GAA club in Kildare, Quinn somehow showed up as the useful idiot fronting a collection of rapacious, greedy venture capitalists who’d grown supposedly rich on the back of the Celtic Tiger via pubs and the kind of property deals that brought Ireland to penury and left the state stained and scarred by a thousand bogus, ghost estates of unfinished luxury dwellings that no one will ever call home. They called themselves the Drumaville Consortium and while anyone with a pinch of common sense realised they’d as much of the Good Samaritan in them as a gang of fellas in a Hiace offering to tarmac your drive on the cheap, the regularly vilified Bob Murray took their money with a turn of speed rarely displayed by any of the players he’d signed in his 20 glorious years at the helm of sunderland.

Following the 15 point relegation in 2005/2006, Quinn, displaying atrocious judgement and pitiful naivety, installed himself as manager, overseeing consecutive defeats to Coventry, Birmingham, Plymouth, Southend and Bury; so much for the magic carpet ride he’d promised the fans. “More of a piss stained mattress” was the comment of one observer. However, in a rare display of humility, Quinn was required to step aside to allow Roy Keane to assume control and you could write a book on his period in charge; from kung fu kicking the tactics board at half time to sending an SMS saying “fuck you” to his assistant Dwight Yorke, the man’s time in charge was almost indescribably mad.

Meanwhile, Quinn concentrated on the kind of vacuous, populist gestures that appealed to the great unwashed; when a collection of drunken, foul-mouthed mackem yobs began terrorising the departure lounge at Bristol Airport, resulting in Easyjet staff cancelling the flight, Quinn stumped up taxis as a reward for unruly and unacceptable behaviour. This, to my mind, is the most shameful act of his time in football. 

That said, Keane’s departure in November 2008, following Ellis Short’s buyout of sunderland from the Drumaville Consortium, can only be seen as the beginning of the end for Quinn. Short is regularly described as a “reclusive Texan billionaire;” I’ve no idea if this is true or not, though it is clear that he’s not the kind of cute, glad-handing gobshite who’d be as likely to be found propping up the bar at a Fianna Fail fundraiser as appearing in the Directors’ Box in the Premier League. Consequently the names of Pat Beirne, Patsy Byrne, Charlie Chawke, Louis Fitzgerald, Paddy Kelly or Jack Tierney are no longer to be found on the SoS payroll; nor is Steve Bruce and neither is Niall Quinn now.

Quinn appears to have lost all credibility with Short when his promise of sell-out 48k crowds on the back of top flight football was shown to be false when Bruce’s side found a window of competence put them in the top half, while the ground remained a third empty at least. Short’s displeasure with Quinn’s empty words led to the infamous announcement by St. Niall that he despised a whole section of his club’s fanbase; comprising those who didn’t go to the games. This didn’t seem a wise thing to say bearing in mind the desperate, grinding poverty and chronic deprivation of almost all areas of the north east that are sunderland supporting.  Amazingly, or not when you consider the collective unconscious of the Wearside populace, they didn’t turn on him, but Short had seen through him. When Bruce was relieved of his duties, Quinn was already in the non-job of Director of Overseas Development; an ironic role considering the disappearance of the one overseas market safc had a toehold in following Keane’s decision to spend more quality time with his beloved dogs. It was obvious Quinn was the executive equivalent of Death Row when even he didn't speak up after the latest mackem fan outrage involved the trashing of a train and assaulting of rail staff as they headed to their kissing cousins in Smogland for a cup replay the other week.

If Steve Bruce had remained in charge, sunderland would probably be bottom 5 by now and there would have been little doubt that a side lead by him would succumb to a 3 goal defeat at St James’ Park in the upcoming derby.  However, Martin O’Neill is an excellent manager and has deservedly led his side to the last 8 of the FA Cup; I have to admit I fear that sunderland will win on March 4^th, possibly by 2-0. Their deep-lying defence and rapid counter attacking will prove a fascinating comparison to Newcastle’s pressing game. Obviously, I won’t be there as Arbroath v East Fife is a more alluring prospect.

That said, defeat to sunderland will not hurt so much now Niall Quinn has left; at least O’Neill is a student of the game and someone who commands respect. A famous perfectionist, I doubt his ascetic aesthetic will have had time for Quinn’s shiftless, loquacious, bibulous Blarney. O’Neill may well have given Short an ultimatum regarding Quinn and there was only ever going to be one loser in that instance. Possibly, in a footballing version of Brian Cowen’s fall from grace and power, the interest of HMRC in Glasgow Rangers and their financial dealings may have caused the twitch of a nervous trigger finger when the contents of the Drumaville era balance sheet of a club who were spending 83% of income on player wages were scrutinised.

Whatever happens between now and the end of the season, whether O’Neill is overseeing a new dawn or a false one, Niall Quinn’s ferry to Dun Laoghaire has sailed. He’ll not be missed; the 22k mackems who bothered to turn up for his last game (a 2-0 win over Arsenal in the 5th round of the cup), rather like the 26k who managed to show their faces in the game after the death of Bob Stokoe, a man who won them the cup (and got them relegated in 87) but had to have his funeral wake at St. James’ Park, show exactly why they were Quinn's sort of people.