Sunderland's identity is unique to us, and that's the way I like it!
01/13/2025 01:00 AM
Lars Knutsen has his say on the north/south footballing divide, and the strong and unique identity that's been forged by Wearsiders over the years
I was born in Sunderland, grew up in Boldon and around the shipbuilding town, and became a Black Cats fan.
I saw all of that as a privilege, and the only real downside was the horror of attending school in Newcastle, but that taught me resilience. The North East of England has a strong identity, a culture of its own, tough people, some unique linguistic influences and stunning nearby countryside.
I often felt a lack of connection with the south of England to the extent that it would've been better for the Metropolitan County of Tyne and Wear to be renamed and located on an island about the size of the Isle of Man, just off the north east coast.
Whichever bureaucrat put the region's two rivers together in a name was clearly a misguided individual and probably a southerner, with a complete lack of knowledge about the rivalries that make this area tick.
It often seemed like London was on a different planet; we had no direct train there from Sunderland, southerners thought we lived with permafrost, and some of the decisions that emerged from the capital seemed baffling.
It was as if nobody, at least in the government, understood the needs we had, as they collected taxes and used the money to develop Scotland.
Our shipbuilding industry was nationalised and effectively destroyed when the highly successful Austin and Pickersgill shipyard was merged with others by a meddling government, and customers cancelled their orders. Thatcher fought the unions, and coal production gradually became a thing of the past.
These actions and the notions behind them had a real effect on uniting the locals in the form of perceiving a common enemy, if that isn't too strong a word.
Perception is reality, and I doubted whether any southerners could easily find us on a map of England, never mind knowing who our players are. I often heard the Fulwell End chants of 'We hate the Cockneys' or demeaning chants about soft players from the capital. That would apply even to teams like Watford and Luton Town, so in some ways the feeling was mutual.
This all came into sharper focus after I graduated and took my first permanent job with Glaxo in Hertfordshire.
A lot of my friends were Spurs fans and in October 1981, I drove with Harold Wilson (an accountant, not the Prime Minster) and Nigel Utting to see their team play a First Division fixture at Roker Park.
Even with Kevin Arnott, Barry Venison, Nick Pickering, Ally McCoist and the heroic Colin West playing for Sunderland, we succumbed to a 0-2 defeat with Steve Archibald and Sunderland-born Micky Hazard netting for the visitors, who eventually finished fourth in 1982.
My strong memory was how Nigel kept moaning about how cold he felt, the long drive through Yorkshire and how Sunderland fans reacted to their Hertfordshire accents. They felt a hostility from the home fans when the visitors scored, and muted their celebrations.
A 2012 press report confirms something that Sunderland fans have suspected for some time: Newcastle is in Scotland, which is presumably something to do with Hadrian's Wall running through the city.
'A confused holiday company in the South of England is insisting that Newcastle is in Scotland.
Bemused Jamie O'Neill e-mailed lowcostholidays.com, based at Gatwick Airport in West Sussex, to point out their geographical error.
The 24-year-old of Cumbernauld, near Glasgow, had been searching for holiday deals on the website for airports north of the border, but the results kept including Newcastle'.
I only emailed with the subject heading 'Newcastle isn't in Scotland. I didn't expect a reply.
He was astounded when Rajesh Bangera from the firm's customer services department did reply.
Newcastle is indeed located in Scotland. It is a city, not a capital. Please feel free to call us for further assistance.
All right-thinking Sunderland fans knew the feeling during our decade in the Premier League.
We would win at Chelsea and the headlines were all about the goings-on at Liverpool or Manchester United, or when the otherwise excellent BBC Five Live Monday Night Club never went into any depth on a win for the Black Cats but instead preferred to talk about Liverpool's substitutes list or rumours emerging from Arsenal.
London-based news sources rarely write about us in depth, or report properly on our games. This always made it more satisfying attending matches when Sunderland won at White Hart Lane, Highbury, The Boleyn Ground, The Valley, Loftus Road or Stamford Bridge, and read the post-match reports.
Just as an experiment, I searched the websites of The Times and The Daily Telegraph for news about our signing of Enzo Le Fée early on January 11.
Nothing.
Things haven't changed, but as a club we can use that ignorance of our team as an advantage when playing in the south, as nobody will know our tactics or our players.
They may have statistics, but they don't tell the whole story, and I for one like it that way.