Roker Report's alternative Christmas speech 2024

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Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images

Compliments of the season to one and all. There's no doubt that 2024 was a year of contrasting fortunes...

Merry Christmas to one and all! May your sacks be bulging with a plethora of three-point hauls, starting with Blackburn on Boxing Day.

As the old cliche goes, it's a game of two halves, and for Sunderland 2024 was a year of two halves. The first was spent floundering like a bluefin tuna on a conveyor belt in the underbelly of a Japanese trawler, as we tried to avoid our fate. It's not really necessary to remind you all, but the Michael Beale tenure was about as enjoyable as discovering there was a Newcastle United keyring inside your Christmas cracker.

It wasn't that Mick actually did such a terrible job, he just wasn't accepted by the Sunderland fans and visibly took the side backwards. All that remained of the 2023/24 season was for Kristjaan Speakman to place Sunderland's snooker cue on the table and walk off to the toilet, despite only being 20 points behind with all the colours remaining.

Photo by Martin Swinney/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

From June onwards it's been a different story, and one we do not yet know the conclusion of. When Regis Le Bris walked through the door, not even the most well-informed of Sunderland fans could have convinced me they had heard of him. However, we've heard of him now - nine wins in the first 12 games gave us all an unexpected lust for promotion. We couldn't could we? The question will be answered in time but the continuing emergence of Jobe, Rigg, Mundle, Watson et al has given us reason to believe.

Hopefully come May we will be given a season to remember.

And that's what supporting this club is all about - memories. I find all too often we look forward in life to what's next; all too often keen to fast forward in order to get to the next thing to tick off the list. Not enough time is spent looking back, but that's not true about Sunderland AFC. It's not true about being a football fan. The memories of the good times gone by are what sustain us in the future. The hopes of more moments like Wycombe at Wembley, or beating our nearest and dearest (again and again and...again). Every game, every season is an attempt to get the band back together, another promotion under Peter Reid, the hope each new striker will be the next Supakev, or that this year the cup run will end in a repeat of 1973.

In short, it's the hope that both sustains and kills you.

When Niall Quinn appeared pitchside at half time during the Norwich match, it invoked an almost melancholic sense of longing and nostalgia. Why? Because for me, it tapped into the memories of the great man, and I'm sad I won't get to relive these in real time again. But boy, there were so many which make this man a legend. What is a legend, I hear you ask? What defines it? Well, to me a legend of the club is someone you would tell your children stories of their exploits - and Niall certainly falls in that category. If you wouldn't tell the bairns, they aren't at that level.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

In years to come I will tell my two children (aged five and 16 months) about the header at St James', the Wembley goals, the time he donned the gloves at Bradford, him scoring the first ever goal at the Stadium of Light; that's not to mention the time he saved the club and became chairman, the taxis from Bristol airport or the testimonial money.

I won't however be telling Eva and Rory about Lee Cattermole any time soon - except maybe for that tackle on Jack Colback. And the fact he was paid "how much?" for "how long?"

So many of these memories are personal to you. Where you were and who you were with when a certain goal was scored or game took place. I've said it before but my life and recollections are structured around our matches - and I don't doubt for so many of you it is the case.

But these memories are all shared too, simply that we put our personal context on those matches, and why they mean so much to you. Your hopes for the future are based on the experiences of the past and in no more a case is it true than in how we view our football club. We just want to repeat the good times and recreate that feeling.

And say it quietly, but the truth is that few things in life make you happier than a last-minute winner, or overturning a two-goal deficit for the first time in 26 years. They sit alongside the stuff in life that really matters.

For many in our city there is a reluctance to look back and a fear of looking forward - and no more is this the case than not knowing where the next meal is coming from. As ever, the Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen appeal is in full swing to help support the amazing work they do there. So if you can, please help to support this amazing place.

Ultimately, this is what binds us as a club and community and city together. None of it is better summed up than the response every year to the appeal; it is something everyone should be proud of. It says so much that support of a football club can propagate such an amazing thing.

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year everyone, see you in 2025!

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