I support Sunderland Association Football Club, and I know weâre never going to win every game, Iâve come to accept it. For too many years weâve seen too many false dawns, the promise of the Reid era, with the two flying wingers, 2 strikers who terrorised defenders and 2 consecutive 7th place finishes. Ultimately the club couldnât sustain our hopes and an inevitable descent down the league, ended with the inevitable soul destroying relegation. The unknown tens millions invested in our club, (that many other teams can only dream of matching) have led to nothing, but more disappointment for us fans, but someday, someday everything will click into place and we will become the Sunderland that deep with us we all know we could be. A part of me will be overjoyed when we, as a team, have evolved to the point where we have no need for the average footballer, the footballer of limited ability who plays with his heart on his sleeve and roars on his team mates for 90 minutes. When we can call on 7 or 8 full internationals for our first team, those with sublime abilities, who can turn a game with a moment of breath taking skill. I will be cheering and dancing with the rest of my supporters when we become part of the established elite. Those 6 or 7 teams who challenge at the top of the Premier league and where European football is offered more often than not. I will have to share my passion, I willingly share it with those who have shared the pain and anguish with me, who have left games broken hearted and vowing never to return. However I will share it begrudgingly with those who have not endured the managers of the likes of Buxton, Mcmenemy and Butcher to name a few amongst the many who have broken hearts. Those fans want a team of winners and who can blame them? In time they may love the club as I do, but to those who have endured the lean times and lost faith, those Iâll welcome them back like lost friends, to those glory hunters, who only love us when we win, then personally Iâd rather they support the Sky 4 (or is it 5 these days?) Harsh? Maybe, but spoken from the heart. But as Iâll celebrate our success, so a part of me will silently grieve, because at that point the club I have grown up watching, will in a small way no longer be mine, the players I grew up watching, the lower league journey men, those lions like Kevin Ball, whose uncompromising style and sheer bloody minded determination made up for their lack of ability, will have no place within the club and I will miss them, I canât deny it. From the heights of the Premier league to the depth of the non league wilderness, I am and will always remain a Sunderland fan, as passionate as any of you who read this. I look forward in hope, but I'll always regret the loss of my childhood heroes
If this was a movie, i would start a slow clap that would turn into a round of applause. Stirring stuff marra. Stirring stuff
I have both empathy and opposition (in equal measure) towards this thread. I too have endured the 70's, 80's 90's, 00's and now into the 10's and in the past 36 years, there have been huge emotional swings and roundabouts. I grew up with a diet of Gary Rowell, Kevin Arnott, Shaun Elliot and Jeff Clarke (one of my all time fav's), right through to the Marco's, Bally's and Benno's and in all that time I still believed we could amount to something as a club, even when we went down to the 3rd division. Youthful exuberance I guess and I was only 21 at the time. I looked at football from a pure romantic stance and not with the head and I dont know exactly when the turn from romantic football fan turned to pure a cynical one but the beginning of the end was certainly the 19 point season and undoubtedly, it completely took over me in the 15 point season. This is the bit that agrees with you. Here is the bit that doesnt. Since then, I have looked at football with much less love ion my heart and more with a bitter demand that things change. I no longer just accept that its always been that way that we are ****e year after year. I want more than that. Much, much more. Do you really think that Arsenal, Man Utd or Liverpool dont have glory hunting supporters that swell their ranks? Do you think any of them really give a ****? They are winners and that's all they care about. Winning things. While we all look at life through rose tinted glasses (and trust me, I've been that bloke for decades) the top clubs cynically go about their business destroying the romantics out of sight. The craas did it under Hall and Keegan. Pre-Keegan they had 20,000 to 30,000 maximum. Post Keegan, that rose to 55,000. Do you think all of those were dyed in the wool fans? Of course not. Well. I'm sick of it. I'm 47 years old in December and I've waited patiently since the 1974/5 season to see SAFC start to look like a top flight club. We briefly did it under Durban, Smith and latterly Reid but never quite had the killer instinct to make it last. We always half heatedly went about our business and got punished EVERY single time. We have been a shambles as a top flight football club for over 4 decades and its the reason I get very angry and tetchy when I see us doing the same mistakes even now. Sbragia was a point in case. Not replacing Bent was likewise. However, we enter the 2011/12 season refreshed and buoyed by some good signing s and maybe a few more yet to come. I want the club to be ruthless and stamp their authority on the league as I know they can. We are not Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea or City but I dont see anyone out of the next batch to be that scared of. Spurs, Liverpool, Everton, Villa, Stoke, Bolton or the Craas. We have a squad, facilities and infrastructure to rival them all. We have a fantastic stadium and if that is full of both passionate fans and glory hunters I'll be highly delighted. If it means that the club have to raise the capacity to 60,000 and fill the seats with prawn sandwich supporters and corporate sponsors then fine bu me too. Do you think any of the top 4 or 5 clubs that do likewise give a **** where the money comes from. They just want as many in spending money to fund even more winning of trophies. Its about time we joined that party. Long overdue IMO.
OP on its way to newsnow I think Had to edit the title vaux to make sure it got to right place on newsnow.
Couldn't agree more, the foundations have been laid, the team building is in progress, the club as a whole is probably in the best hands it's ever been in and i don't see no reason why we can compete with the Liverpools, Evertons, Villa's, Spurs of this league.
Cest, In many ways I agree with you and I have know we'll need the revenue the extra fans will bring into the club, this in turn will help us to grow and (hopefully) attract bigger and better players, but that doesn't mean I'll like it. My main gripe would be the fact that you, I and others on this forum have/will have(?) served our time under the ****e that has been served up to us in the past, and then for us to start to become successful a lot of fair weather supporters (we've seen this happen to a lesser extent in the run up to christmas last season) will drift in and proclaim SAFC to be the best thing ever, and they can remember the bad old days blah, blah, blah. They'll **** off soon enough when we hit a bad patch, and be vocal enough in their protests that people will take notice and label us like that lot up the road. Dunno about you guys but at the SOL I'd rather sit next to someone who was as gutted as I was at the last relegation than some ponce in a suit only interested in securing another business deal.
