Profuse apologies that this is Sunderland but change a few details and it is
all of us.
This blend of history, hope, yearning and passion is what football is all
about
George Caulkin in The Times
February 28 2014 07:02AM
This is it. This. That flutter in the belly, that sprinkle of nerves, that
wondrous, aching possibility of this time, this time, for God's sake PLEASE
let it be this time. That cacophonous train ride, that lad sitting opposite
decanting booze into Ribena bottles, that motorway convoy, scarves trailing
from windows, that persistent, pissed memory from last night: your mate in a
copper's helmet, sopping and shivering in the Trafalgar Square fountains.
This is it.
This is what football is. What it was. That walk towards Wembley, at once
familiar and new, the old chants and the remixes, scorching the air. The
fella you recognise from a few seats along at the Stadium of Light, who
never stops moaning - that miserable git - but he's strolling beside you and
he's neither miserable or moaning, because he's shepherding his kids,
fussing and smiling. They couldn't miss this. Not this.
This is it. Not enough to obliterate all those disappointments, those
bitter, loveless relegations, but you wouldn't want that, anyway. They are
part of who you are. Part of Sunderland. And whether you stopped going or
persevered, whether you are an addict or a convert, a malcontent or a
loyalist, this is your patience through adversity, your gallows humour,
those howls of anguish. This is why you do what you always do; bear witness
and sing.
But this is how it should feel. This is less about winning - although you
wouldn't say no - than giving it a go. Trying everything and then heaving a
bit more. Not holding yourself in. Seeing a flash of silver across the
stadium and knowing that 90 minutes could mean a long journey's end and
another beginning. This adrenaline. This soppy descent into cliches about
heroes and giant-killings, those stories about Stokoe's sprint and Monty's
sorcery. About daring to dream.
This is why your dad passed down that beautiful, cursed birthright. Your
mam or your sister, brother or friends. This is why he stood at Roker
Park, so cold and crammed that his legs were locked and leaden. This is
why you shook together at those reserve-games, why you stayed outside when
the rain whipped in, your mouth numb and nose running. This is why you put
up with his stupid music on that endless away trip. This is all those
feelings like love and loss, straining for release.
This is Sunderland, your Sunderland. This is your city, your town, your
village, your region, forgotten sometimes and left to suffer, but prominent
now, loud and raucous. This is supporters' associations and local branches,
working men's clubs, community and togetherness, collective strength, being
part of something both greater than and intrinsically you. This is pride -
stinging tears of pride. This is raising your head and gazing at the sky,
not staring down at your navel.
This. Not that great, grotesque lie about priorities. Not swallowing the
guff that one season of toil should be superseded by another, that having
endured the delights of Stoke City, the only ambition must be straining to
get to Stoke again. You know what Stoke's like. Christ. Aston Villa, Crystal
Palace. Tick them off. Been there, seen it and, you know what, they're not
that much different from Leicester, Queens Park Rangers and Birmingham.
Not couldn't be arsed. Not withdrawing your best players for a one-off match
because of 38 league games which simply must take precedence in a cold, grey
world of sporting accountancy. Not fear. Not dread. Not measly, weasel-word
excuses for laying waste to tradition because of avarice or arrogance and
cowardice. Not name-changes and colour-swaps and franchises, or a stadium's
brutal nobility scarred by garish advertising hoardings for money-lenders
and tat-hawkers.
Not the bottom-line. Not the profits or the losses, the turnover and the
revenue, the wage-bills and the relegation-clauses, because when the files
are lodged at Companies House, they will not be hailed with an open-top bus
ride, a civic reception, or a hazy, alcoholic day which stays lodged in the
brain. Not Financial Fair Play, not billionaires, not the stodge of
mid-table and totting up television revenue after one more lunchtime
kick-off and a 200-mile journey.
Which is not to toss away the prospect of staying up. Nor to deny that it
matters for progress and development and all those other birds which have
never quite flown. But neither is it everything, because you've slumped
before and ricocheted back. Having squirmed through long, sapping sequences
in every single season since Roy Keane and Niall Quinn secured your return
to this ceaseless, daft, grasping jamboree, you reckon you can cope.
This, though. This is something. This is different. This is booking your
London hotel en route from that draining, life-affirming semi-final, when
those caustic commentaries about the worst penalty shoot-out in the history
of awful penalty shoot-outs missed the point entirely. It was the best. This
is snaking, sluggish, twitchy queues outside the box office, 80,000 frantic
telephone calls on a single day, begging for favours, scurrying for tickets.
This is a day out and a night away, a daubed blur of red and white. This,
like the song says, is cheesy chips on Wembley Way. And win or lose, this
will be recorded and you were there, one small figure lost amid the din, but
integral to it, which, in the final analysis, is what clubs and their
supporters should mean. What football is. This is history, hope, yearning
and passion, maybes and meaning, exquisite agony, wild abandon, love. This
is you. This is Sunderland. This is it.
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John 'Grampa' Sykes
Rest In Peace old lad
28th Oct 1938 - 12 Nov 2013
MARCHING ON TOGETHER
