4th December, 2000 may be a date that means nothing to many reading this. It perhaps was just another day 26 years ago. Some may even recall there was a Sunderland game that day. Others may remember we beat Everton 2-0 that night, with Alex Rae and Super Kev scoring.
However, to me, this date is special. That night, a cold, windy night in December, was my first Sunderland game.
I’ll never forget the anticipation, walking up out of the concourse in the east stand and looking up. I’d never seen something
so big, so spectacular. The best way I can equate it is to how it feels walking up Wembley Way and just seeing the absurd size of that monolithic structure at the end.
Perhaps, for those who have never been, akin to how it feels to look up and see the size of the San Siro for the first time up close. Arching your neck so high to just catch a glimpse of the famous towers, or the red horizontal girders that hold it up. We’ll see her in December.
I remember sitting in the third row of the East Stand, the smell of balti pies, the plastic cup of hot chocolate warming my hands. I remember Alex Rae scoring a raker from the edge of the box, my first live Sunderland goal. Granted, many of us don’t have great memories. But I’m always a little surprised when people say they can’t remember their first game. I can still live it now.
It felt like the place where you’d be at your happiest. The place where memories could be made rather than remembered. Yet, in truth, it was a 6-year-old child in the East Stand, his dad beside him, no idea or care for what the next 26 years would bring. Only that wherever it is spent, this must be the place. A naive melody; no idea how many Saturdays would be spent here, no idea how much euphoria and frustration this ridiculous football club would provide. No idea that, 26 years later, he’d be standing in the same ground amongst a collective 48,000 dreams being made.
On Wednesday evening, I relived it. Realising that dream of European football wasn’t for the man in his thirties. But the six-year-old clad in about four layers, utterly falling in love with Sunderland AFC. It was for all of us who braved the torrential rain in Accrington, when Northern Rail strikes occurred and it was like Planes, Trains & Automobiles getting to the game. Going to the Bescot and finding out the only “food” they had left at all was Bovril. For those who saw Sunderland’s first team lose against Leicester’s U21 side. Next week, our very own U21s now take part in that very competition against Accrington, while Leicester face administration and will sit bottom of League One after their 12-point deduction is applied. You almost hope they can make their own way back.
The Stadium of Light hasn’t had its spotlights for 23 years. We used them to make our way to the match, driving down the coast road and seeing them miles away, walking the back streets down by Crozier’s chippy and popping in for some sneaky chips, hearing “dinnit tell yer mar”, but not really understanding what not to tell her, or why, then standing outside in the freezing cold and seeing the lights – knowing the Stadium was just around the corner.
For far too long, that light was gone. The League One days became a chore, but you’d still go. The rusting exterior, the lifeless, half-empty stands. Us hardy souls trying our best, but always reminiscing about when it was bouncing back in the good old days.
For far too long, the Stadium of Light didn’t uphold its very own name.
The lights came on, we took to our seats, but we all felt the cold. The light had gone. The spotlights were physically turned off 23 years ago, but the soul left the club gradually. It had become a carrion’s corpse, rotting away due to a decade of mismanagement and apathy from the top. Yet, every week, the pilgrimage was made, trudging up those steps.
We watched, because that’s what we did. We went, because that’s where we went. We supported, because what else can you do? We believed, despite having no belief left. We endured, because we are Sunderland.
And somewhere underneath all the frustration, humiliation and morbid gallows humour, there remained this stubborn belief that one day Sunderland would feel like Sunderland again. It was never further away than when it felt so close: Charlton at Wembley, Max Power’s long-range shot, Tom Lockyer’s header.
The paradoxical hope – and hurt – of loving this enormous institution.
On Wednesday evening, the light came back on.
Sunderland know this, as Fred Again and Jamie T’s Light’s Burn Dimmer blazed around the stadium pre-match. A song about surviving melancholy, and enduring the drain of energy, overcoming numbing depression.
Our lights have never been brighter.
Our previous modern glory days are Reidy’s successive seventh-place finishes just after the turn of the century. We cannot go back in time to witness Super Kev and Quinny up top, or Gavin McCann as he tackles and passes, harries and harasses. Nor can you experience the first time you walk into the SoL (or Roker Park) ever again. You can’t go back to your childhood. But now and then, the football gods do something strange with time, and you can palpably sense those emotions once again.
The smell of the pies, the warmth of about twelve Guinnesses giving me a beer jacket, the pride at seeing our team, our lads, in European football. The eyes of the world on our small, but great city. The cacophonous wall of noise that travelled out of the Roker End, my mates who I endured eight years of absolute shite with, and my dad, standing shoulder to shoulder.
That light had never gone away; it merely burned dimmer.
These days are the new glory days, out of the darkness, and into the light.
