I’m really looking forward to this first derby in almost ten years, but unlike a lot of my RR brethren, I am quite surprised that I haven’t been nervous really. I’ve had hardly any butterflies at all.
On match day itself I will generally get twitchy pre-match, and in the game the tense and nervous energy between me and my Sunlun-mad son in my Cambridgeshire living room will be off the levels you can cut with a butter knife. It’s the same when we travel up from Cambridgeshire for a match.
But the usual
pre-match build-up knot in the guts I had in the past for these derbies just isn’t there, which is really weird.
Why is that? Maybe it’s cos I’m getting older – I was 55 late last month, so have been a passionate Lads fan for over 40 years while working all around the world. While
I’m sure maturity is a factor, in the back of my mind the reality is this game will not mentally distract me from how far we have come to this point and how well we can still do this season, no matter how the derby goes.
Granted, it’s a game that carries so much more than three points for all Mackems in terms of emotions and regional one-upmanship.
A victory means another notch on the tally chart against the “auld enemy”; it grants unchallengeable bragging rights at work, down the pub, and across the county we have to share (though I’d much prefer to be part of Durham, which we were until the year after our FA Cup win). We get all those benefits at least till the next one comes around. It’s just mint.
I don’t live in the north-east any more though, and I haven’t since I was 18 when I joined the RAF, so a lot of those local benefits of a win against the filthy Tynesiders (and the flip-side pain if we do lose) don’t apply to me or my lad.
On the emotional side, we all get that a derby win will amplify pride exponentially compared to other games too. It restores and builds confidence beyond previous levels more than any win and multiplies the love for our club and the players to levels where instant legends can be cast in bronze almost as the winning whistle is blown. Rowell, Gabbiadini, Phillips, Quinn, Defoe. All legends in my eyes.
Give them all a statue. Call it the Mag Slayers. Do it now, Kyril. Hopefully you can add on an Isidor and a Brobbey too.
Everyone knows who scored the great goals against the Mags. Players we will all treasure for ever are made from these moments. Sunderland icons are created at times like these, which all the players will know for sure.
And all that is purely because beating these over-entitled monochrome bastards is just the absolute dog’s nob of a day for us all.
Playing this game after such a long absence at this time of year too (other than the cup game which was played when the teams were nowhere near on an even keel), it is probably true that many fans would likely swap all the gifts and the slap-up Christmas dinner to come to guarantee a victory against these Neanderthals from less than ten miles up the road. “Cancel Christmas, just give me the win” will be the mindset of many a committed fan.
Looking at this with my exile’s eyes and with my years of association with this club though, my view is we have to remember whatever happens today, this does not define the success of our season. Even if we lose – though it may not feel anything less than the world has ended – we will be all good this campaign.
Why? Because we are on the up, and most other Prem-level teams right now simply don’t know what we are or what Régis will do to optimise our chances of success.
We are an ambitious, strategically mature, financially astute behemoth of a club who, after years of being in the wilderness, have found a new lease of life.
We have an owner who is wealthy enough to drive us and with connections to bring in major investment if he needs help. He is a lad who has lived and breathed elite-level football all his young life through his family.
He does not come across as someone who may get bored like the Ellis Shorts or dodgy Saudi princes of this world. He has already demonstrated that he is using his connections and network of contacts to take this wonderful club forward, one step at a time, in a controlled and structured manner.
Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is probably one of the best things that have ever happened to SAFC, certainly in my lifetime. And I would say that based on only what has happened to now. What may come is the stuff of dreams.
In terms of progress, we have already played 15 games in our first Premier League campaign in eight years or so and are in the top ten. We have lost the same amount of games as Man City, Chelsea, and Man Utd. We are above Liverpool and Spurs, and of course Newcastle.
There is a long way to go but we are running at just over 1.5 points per game. That will get us close to 60 points if it persists, and all we really hoped for back in August was 35 to 40 to stay up. 65 points got Forest into Europe last season. Just saying…
We mainly wanted to break the recent hoodoo of promoted teams going back down. We may well achieve that before St Valentine warms up his bow at this rate.
So… when it comes to 4 p.m. and we have the result, if we win, go for your life and as one of the many mantras of the season says “let’s get carried away”.
It will be a great achievement if we can turn these lot over at our gaff after coming from the second tier only last May, and the change of tack from aiming for survival to European football contenders will still (no pun intended) be a thing.
But if we lose, these Lads have still been absolutely immense given how we got promoted and how well we have kicked on since.
A very wise man called Aristotle once said “One swallow makes no summer, nor does one day”; and in the same way it takes more than one day or one short space of time to make a happy man.
We sing every week in the stands about the words of a wise man, and these are words we should very much bear in mind.
Let’s beat these lot sure, but if we don’t prevail, the season can still be a massive success, and I think it will be so, however we do at home to these lot.
Keep the faith. ’Til the end. FTM.
