Sunderland v Newcastle

Is the rivalry between Sunderland and Newcastle mostly friendly or does it sometimes get violent? If you're a Sunderland fan, could you go out on the town in Newcastle and have a good time, or would you expect trouble from Toon fans? And the same the other way around? Just trying to figure out how much rivalry there is compared to other derby matches in UK.

 

Throughout the rest of the year you find that Sunderland fans and Newcastle fans can work, and sometimes even socialise together in reasonable harmony...However, in the weeks proceeding and days following a derby game it is a case of all gloves are off, and I'm sorry to say that it often does lead to examples of violence.
As for drinking in each others city..Personally I would never dream of drinking through Newcastle.. However, I would imagine that as long as people who did do it kept away from shouting about their respective football teams, then they would be ok.

 

Through the week and non derby days, the Mags are overall good people, we work with them, we drink with them, we chase girls with them.

The whole feel of the region changes in the build up to the derby, people who you class as friends 363 days a year are the enemy, and sadly there is still a large enough element who will use the derby as an excuse to go to battle, there will be trouble, there always is, but fortunately it's not a reflection on 2 sets of magnificent and passionate supporters, who have taken more **** than most over the last 50 years, but will always back their side & turn up in numbers.

The number of users on this board for our 2 clubs that are active every day gives you an insight into just how big our respective clubs are in our lives, we don't support our teams, we live and breathe them.

In terms of passion and the blanket effect our derby has on the whole region, even the non football fans feel the change in the air, our derby is second only to Rangers vs Celtic in Britain, second to NONE in the UK.

You'll get fans saying 'there's bigger games' etc, they are wrong.

There are derbies where there are 2 bigger teams, the Scouse derby, nowadays the Manc derby, the London games involving Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea, but in terms of the game itself, the occasion, the significance regardless of league standing, our derby is THE derby.

I once took a mate of mine who supports Portsmouth to our game, there derby with Saints is underrated itself, he was staggered at the atmosphere, said he'd never imagined anything like it.

 

On derby days, hell would freeze over before friendly banter broke out.

The other 363 days it’s a good piss take.

 

Mags, mackems, whatever. The NE is generally pretty much the same all over. Some arsehole, some top people. Some nice places, some **** holes. It's Boro you want to avoid like the plague...

 

We'll all agree on that (proving we ain't always in disagreement in the process, nice.).

 

I am glad I'm retired or I wouldn't have been at work after the 5-1 defeat as I worked in Newcastle

 

I have been living in Sunderland 5 years I now moved up from London, been to few London Derby games ...have to be honest the atmosphere of THE local Derby game can be cut with a knife, more passion and intensity than any London match I been too.
I have found both Mackems and Geordies fans to really genuine friendly people with a unique sense of humour(obviously you can meet idiots who spoil it for the majority anywhere in this country ).

 

I've had many good nights out in Newcastle. Even on some occasions I have been identified as a Mackem with no bother other than the occasional dig. Which you'd expect.
If I went there shouting from the rooftops about SAFC I'd expect and probably get a good kicking.
The same would be true for them in Sunderland.

 

The Swansea v Cardiff derby matches also have an electric atmosphere, but you have vastly more supporters, so you are obviously way ahead of that.

The numbers of posts on the Newcastle and Sunderland sections of this forum are probably more than all the other teams put together. So I can understand why playing each other generates so much interest.

 

In a lot of ways the rivalry is kept strong by our failures and the fact we terminally underachieve.

A few times one or the other has threatened to break away from the other, but it never happens, this means generally we're competing around the same level, often clubs are seperated by a league or 2 the majority of the time.

 

Sorry this is long but it's a very good read. First published in the Guardian.


The Tyne-Wear derby may be perceived by the uninitiated as parochial and unsophisticated, but like the world’s greatest derbies it has a historical conflict as its bedrock. And if anything, as a basis for a rivalry, the Sunderland-Newcastle derby is the most legitimate conflict anywhere.
Some of the great derbies are based on issues that are trite and irrational. The historical class difference, for example, between the Milan clubs – Milan traditionally unionist and working-class, Inter upper-class and conservative – is now moot, given the chairmanship of the right-wing Silvio Berlusconi at Milan. Their historical reason for difference has dissipated, as it arguably has for Juventus-Torino, Real Madrid-Atletico, and Panathinaikos-Olympiakos.
The Celtic-Rangers rivalry has been written about extensively, and needs no elaboration. Other than to say that if football can act as a metaphor for international and jingoistic warfare, then the Old Firm is the most articulate. But the Tyne-Wear derby wins in its secular and concise regional conflict.
It does, after all, predate football by 226 years. It is a conflict that has divided two cities, 12 miles apart, for more than three centuries.
In the epoch before the 1600s, King Charles I had consistently awarded the East of England Coal Trade Rights (try to contain your excitement) to Newcastle’s traders, which rendered the Wearside coal merchants redundant. People died because of it. Coal and ships were Sunderland’s raison d’etre.
But when, in 1642, the English Civil War started, and Newcastle, with good reason, supported the Crown, Sunderland, because of the trading inequalities, sided with Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, and the division began.
It became a conflict between Sunderland’s socialist republicanism, against Newcastle’s loyalist self-interest. A purposeful enmity if ever there was one. Unlike rivalries between other clubs, the differences between Newcastle and Sunderland date back to fighting based on the necessity to live and feed one’s children, and benefit one’s city.
The political differences between the two culminated with the battle of Boldon Hill. A loyalist army from Newcastle and County Durham gathered to fight an anti-monarchist Sunderland and Scottish army at a field equidistant between the two towns.
The joint Scottish and Sunderland army won – and Newcastle was colonised by the Scottish. It was subsequently used as a Republican military base for the rest of war.
And while this is a lucid basis for two cities hating each other, it has, like every other modern-day derby, developed profoundly irrational manifestations.
It has been noted that some Newcastle fans refuse to buy bacon, because of its ‘red-and-white appearance’ – the pinnacle, regardless of any jovial flippancy, of irrational behaviour. Likewise the past Mackem boycott of a particular breakfast cereal, because of the Newcastle-orientated marketing of its brand, is silly beyond words. However, these are benign occurrences.
In March 2000, more than 70 Sunderland and Newcastle hooligans took part in some of the worst football-related violence ever seen in Britain. It was not even a match day. What the police called ‘usually respectable men and fathers’ had decided to meet in mutual territory with their enemies, to fight with knives, bats and bricks.
Sunderland fans boarded a ferry towards Tyneside, found the awaiting ‘army’, and fought. One man was left permanently brain-damaged. Dozens of people were arrested, and years upon years of prison-time was sentenced.
The continuation of tension involves a new sense of injustice. For well over a decade, Sunderland’s population has bemoaned that they have been paying their local taxes to finance both the Newcastle Metro and airport.
A perceived bias towards Tyneside in the regional and national media further compounds a feeling of inequality. It seems that history is repeating itself for the people of Sunderland, albeit in a less livelihood-threatening sort of way. Perhaps a more trivial, city-image sort of way.
But this makes little sense. Let’s just hope that despite the hijacking of the game by the corporate class, and the working-class ostracising that comes with it, there remain terraces from which Mackems and Geordies can vent their invariably abusive opinions of each other without violence and civil war.
Why Mackems and Geordies?
The derivations are uncertain, but both have theories based in historical political allegiances. ‘Geordie’ because of Tyneside’s staunch support of the Hanoverian King George II during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion – ‘Geordie’ is a common diminutive of ‘George’; and Mackem because of Wearside’s accommodation of the Scottish ‘Blue Mac’ army during the civil war.
It is more likely, however, that the origins stem from aspects of the shipbuilding and coalmining industries. The Tyneside coalminers preferred George Stephenson’s ‘Geordie’ safety lamp over the more widely used Humphry Davy lamp. And it has been accepted almost universally that Mackem is derived from the phrase Mak(e)’em and Tak(e)’em, coined by Tyneside shipbuilders to insult their counterparts on the River Wear, who would build the ships and have them taken away by the richer classes.

 

you can not imagine the rivalary unless you support sunderland or newcastle

 

I would have to add that it is THE Derby in England but i once had the pleasure (not sure if that's the right word) of going to Ibrox when they played Celtic. If i said it was hostile, that would be a massive understatement, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.

 

I actually left the SOL and jumped in a taxi through to SJP the day of the 5-1 drubbing to meet up with a few geordie mates of mine MAD I know but If I had of bottled it I would not have heard the last of it. So Jumped out of the taxi near the Big market (some thugs spotted the Sunderland plate on it and booted it a few times as it drove off) and walked up to tiger tiger where they awaited my arrival (although none of them thought I would turn up).

On the way they were in the streets fighting with each other and had running battles with the police. I then walked into Tiger Tiger head held high and they could not believe it.

The banter flowed and I took it (was the hardest thing I have ever done) then we got locked into Tiger Tiger for an hour because the fans were fighting amounst themselves outside ....OH HOW I LAUGHED !!!! I told them what a party atmosphere there was in Sunderland when we won at our place 2-1 and there was not a sign of bother and to be fair to them they were ashamed about what was going on outside.

All in all we get on fine other then football so I put up with them lol as they do me!!!

 

They're all twats...........for the two games at least...

Then it's back to nornal, with us being the top dogs for now and the forseeable future.

Apart from that they're ok really, can't wait for derby day this time around, still be on the piss with the ****ers though, win, win or win.