The season is drawing to a close and promotion or relegation is on your club’s radar. It can only mean one thing – Sky Sports will start messing with your fixtures. As a Sunderland supporter I should know by now not to even bother marking end of season fixtures in my diary on a Saturday afternoon as Sky swirls vulture-like waiting to gorge on our usual drama. Match-free Saturdays just feel all wrong. Capacity to operate on any social or domestic level evaporates since there’s an obsessive compulsive disorder which makes you to check out rivals’ scorelines every 90 seconds. Jeff Stelling owns you. Normal function cannot resume until after 5pm. I’m pretty crap at maths but at 4.45 towards the end of most seasons I regularly exercise Vorderman-like superpowers on the numerical probabilities relating to Sunderland’s bit of the table. My late uncle used to say he’d seen Sunderland go up and down more times than a bride’s nightie.
To be a quality supporter of a yoyo outfit you need to regard yourself as belonging to a “Big Club”. You believe that you have a right to be in The League Above The One You Are In. Your fans are “proper”, “loyal” and “passionate”. Your team has shedloads of “tradition” and a back catalogue of success; you choose to ignore the accumulation of dust. You believe that people in small towns like Wigan don’t deserve to see Premiership football because of their pathetic attendances. They should stick to rugby league. You feel that clubs in The League You Are Actually In should feel graced by your presence.
Problem is it all falls apart when we come to the errrm…..football. Your players not only have to be a bit crap but have avoided having their missing spines being spotted in the medical. Signings of players have to be greeted with a look of bewilderment and a quick trawl through lower league stats. Managerial appointments must be met with groans and a shrug and a sigh that Martin O’Neill must be clearly nuts to turn you down. On hearing about his appointment during The Howard Wilkinson Horror Show, having to Google “Steve Cotterill” was a personal low.
The media love us almost as much as the opposition fans love taking the piss out of our preened budgie/perch-toppling antics. This season Sky
were onto us from the start. Messianic fervour had hit Wearside as St Niall Quinn and his Drumaville Consortium had taken over the club from Bob Murray’s unpopular tutelage. Niall knows we are a Big Club. So big he hadn’t tempted a decent manager so appointed himself.
Sky sensed a Big Story so our opening game kicked off on a Sunday lunchtime on blazing hot August 6th. How rubbish. More followed.
The problem was the errrrm ...football. Our pig’s ear of a squad which had picked up the Worst Team in Premiership History award in 2005/6
hadn’t changed. When Kevin Kyle lumbered on from the subs’ bench I felt sick. On hearing the mention of his mother-in–law Reggie Perrin conjured up the image of a hippo. One glimpse of Kyle and I’d get a split-screen image of a cow’s arse and a banjo. And after seasons of mediocrity some of my brethren loved him.
I took myself and the family off to France and contemplated relegation. Switching your mobile on when you’re on holiday has a certain element of Russian Roulette about it. Each beep could be the loaded barrel: house on fire, dead hamster anyone? The trigger finger of Sunderland Clubline kept firing news that was as welcome as limescale on a shower head. Five losses on the bounce.
On Aug 28th as I lolled beside the pool my phone went mental. Roy Keane was going to be our new manager. I actually sat up. The rest as they say is history.
Sunderland Football Club is taking a break from yoyo. I will avoid saying that Keano doesn’t do yoyo because it’s too naff (sorry, couldn’t resist that invite to headline accordingly – Ed). I’ve read stories about him putting pictures up of Sunderland footballing legends. Solid fans, top facilities are all well and good but you are nothing without good football and pride. I was at a party with some gloomy Forest fans recently who were talking about the lovely football we have played this season.
And we have. Carlos Edwards’ wonder goal in our last home game of the season took my breath away. For the final third of the season I was going to games feeling optimistic. I loved it when our lads jumped in the crowd (when they’re not allowed….) ‘cos they love playing for Sunderland. I knew we would go up automatically. When we conceded we came back. I think it’s about belief and a winning mentality putting it right on the pitch, but I’m still new to it all. Following Sunderland this season has been so mint it should have a hole in it.
When we got promotion with Mick McCarthy I was quietly horrified. As the blokes around me did that strange dance that looks like they’re milking a giant cow to the That’s What I Call Promotion cd I was already preparing for relegation. We hadn’t played lovely footy, we weren’t mint and were about to be punching above our weight.
Me and my mates keep banging on about how different and good
it feels under a chairman and manager who are winners and who don’t feel promotion merits the carbon footprint left by an open topped bus.
Sky messed up our proposed Saturday night personal celebration
plans by moving our last home game vs Burnley to a Friday. My usual long but leisurely Saturday drive from my home in Nottingham became a journey of Dick Dastardly proportions as I tried to second guess Friday afternoon traffic hotspots. We won a thrilling game but had to wait until the Birmingham and Derby games mathematically confirmed our mintness.
Promotion was clinched on Sunday as I watched Crystal Palace turn over Derby on our kitchen telly. Roy Keane was walking his dog. I was peeling spuds. Winning has become nice and normal. Euro yoyo might be ok for a laugh.
