This coming weekend, the sun will shine, the clock will strike 4:00pm and Sunderland will embark on their most important game in a generation — a mere twelve months after their last generationally important game.
Sunderland have never done things easily.
We’ve never done things normally and yet again, we’re exposed to a season that, when in danger of fizzling out into mid-table mediocrity, found itself veering towards the most dramatic ending it could muster from the circumstances available to us.
Whether or not we pull off the miracle of European qualification seems almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, because even to have the slightest of hope of such an achievement borders on insanity, especially when juxtaposed against all that came before it.
Whatever happens, one can only feel the most immense pride a fan can feel. A team that’s defied the odds and expectations all season has one final chance to upset them all again on a grand scale, and to reiterate: to even have the opportunity to achieve this is absurd and, to a degree, deserved.
Why is it deserved? I could list those reasons and probably get within touching distance of three figures, such is the absurdity and nonsense that’s dogged Sunderland in near enough equal measure for over a decade.
But why this feeling, this dream and this hope is so important is because this team reflects the greatest strength the Sunderland fanbase possesses — we’ve simply never stopped believing.
We didn’t stop believing when we spent season after season toying with relegation before we were eventually swallowed up.
We didn’t stop believing when the following season, this club dropped like a stone. We still didn’t stop believing when we entered the third tier of English football and so few players reported for pre-season we didn’t have enough to field a legitimate match-day squad.
When we fell at the agonising hurdle of the playoffs, we still never stopped believing. Against our better judgement we still believed when a global pandemic and Phil Parkinson united to form an axis of pure, unadulterated disappointment. Even after that chastening experience, we still never stopped believing until that belief was finally rewarded with a return to the Championship.
Then it all started again, never stopping that belief that better and bigger was always on its way.
Not when Alex Neil dropped us quicker than you could say “mega contract at Stoke City”. Not when we threw everything at it just to fall short at Kenilworth Road to a Luton side built entirely on shithouses. Nor did it stop when the board lost their senses for long enough to appoint Michael Beale. Even when the panic was deep-seated (for some, not all) when we then took an age to find Beale’s successor, that belief didn’t stop.
Then it came — the bounce to the big time, and even the most enduring fan had their belief tested as we limped home before getting the seemingly cursed draw of two legs against Coventry City.
Once that particular mountain was scaled, the belief still didn’t stop — yet perhaps only for the gut-wrenching moment when Sheffield United scored their second goal, before VAR flooded the hope back into our veins with a timely intervention, with one half of Wembley representing the very embodiment of belief.
However, even after that, the footballing world tried to take that belief and strip it from us, as for an entire summer, we were told to park our ambition, abandon all hope and brace ourselves.
Prophesied were low-points tallies, weekly hammerings at the hands of some of Europe’s finest and an acceptance that we were there for a good time and not a long time. In short, we were told to stop believing anymore because the Premier League for Sunderland wasn’t a place for dreams to come true but for them to crash and burn in spectacular fashion.
But that isn’t us. That isn’t Sunderland.
When our backs have been against the wall, we found a way and we never stopped believing.
That’s why we’ve taken a ridiculous twenty two points from losing positions this season. That’s why we’ve fronted up our closest rivals — in both our own back yard and theirs. That’s why we have held the current top four to draws at the Stadium of Light, and that’s why only three teams have conceded fewer goals than us.
When the fans believe, the players believe and those two worlds collide, the impossible can seem possible.
The Sunderland we know is bold, ambitious, and as of right now, they have us in a dream state — which they’ve done for most of the season. And now, as Sunday comes into focus and the unlikely and the improbable put their reputations on the line against the belief and dreams of 40,000-plus Mackems, the only thing we can do is believe once more and hope this dream continues.
After all, in the words of Paddy McAloon, “This world needs its dreamers, may they never wake up.”
HAWAY THE FUCKING LADS.
