Tomorrow Everton. Today, probably the best article you’ll ever read about Sunderland

Jonathan Wilson
Jonathan Wilson

Salut! Sunderland settled back for another quietly inactive Saturday, the lull before tomorrow’s Goodison storm. So why, suddenly, were people coming to the site? We have ‘HarrogateMackem’ to thank, for drawing renewed attention at Ready To Go’s Pure Football forum.

SAFC fans who are otherwise rarely seen here flocked to the link and have posted some rightly admiring comments at RTG. So it seems fitting to bring back to a life at Salut! Sunderland one of the finest pieces of writing* to grace these pages. Apologies to those who have seen it all before (unless, like Monsieur Salut and quite a few others, they feel it lends itself to re-reading at least once a year: see the comments posted by our own readers in 2011 at https://safc.blog/2011/10/jonathan-wilson-the-candystripe-passions-of-grandfather-father-and-son/), when the article was headline ‘Jonathan Wilson: the candystripe passions of grandfather, father and son’. But Jonathan Wilson is a wonderful writer as well as supporting Sunderland and he proves both parts of that statement here …

Jonathan Wilson’s book on a Sunderland great

Last year, after my dad had died, I stayed holding his hand for about quarter of an hour and then left the nurses to it. In the hospital waiting room I made three calls. The first was to Sunderland Civic Centre to register the death. The second was to the undertakers. And the third was to The Independent to tell them that I was, after all, free to cover Sunderland v Burnley the next day.

I know a lot of people found that odd. To be honest, looking back, it seems odd to me. At the time, though, it seemed perfectly natural.

Part of it, of course, was that I needed something else to do; that I couldn’t bear just to sit at home with my mam, wallowing in that blend of grief and relief that comes after the death of a loved one who has been tormented by illness. Part of it was about honouring my dad’s militant unemotionalism, his insistence on getting on with things no matter what. And part of it was because football and my dad were so closely related.

That evening, discussing funeral arrangements with the undertaker, I mentioned that the first game Sunderland had played after the death of the great inside-forward Raich Carter had also been against Burnley. I realised that my mam and the undertaker were looking at me strangely, at which it dawned on me what an odd thing it was to know.

I have no idea how I knew it – I certainly don’t have a checklist of first games played after famous player’s deaths – but I’ve looked it up and I was right. It was the kind of detail in which my dad would have delighted.

He was not, in any sense, a talkative man, but on long drives he would regularly, after minutes of silence, ask, “Do you know what happened on this weekend 20 years ago?” and, when my mam and I admitted we didn’t, he’d reveal that it was the anniversary of a Brian Clough goal against Walsall, or of Kevin Arnott’s debut, or of Jim Montgomery’s save at Huddersfield which, he always maintained, was better than the more famous one in the 1973 FA Cup final.

After Carter’s death, Sunderland and Burnley had played out a scruffy 1-1 draw. They had the decency, at least, to mark my dad’s passing with a comfortable 2-1 win that mathematically confirmed they would not be relegated: nothing flash or extravagant, but proficient and economical, just as my dad would have liked it.

My dad grew up about 200 yards from Roker Park, Sunderland’s old ground, and his mother lived in the same house on Appley Terrace until a few weeks before her death in December 1995. When I was a kid, we often used to go there for tea on a Saturday. When I was six, my dad started to take me to the ground for the last 15-20 minutes of games, sneaking in when they opened the gates to let people out. The first thing I saw was Steve Williams sidefooting an equaliser for Southampton. I’d been to about a dozen games before, a year later, I saw Sunderland score for the first time, Gary Rowell heading in at the back post against Leicester.

Looking back, it occurs to me that we talked about football remarkably little, but then we didn’t really need to. We saw the game the same way, knew what each other was thinking. We both disdained the flashy, both admired calmness and precision and respected deep-lying central midfielders who distributed the ball without fuss. It was only at his funeral that I found out he’d played right-back for his school team: needless to say, that was the position I played for my college side.

When we watched football on television together, we communicated in a series of tuts and grunts. After Sunderland had lost on penalties to Charlton in the 1998 play-off final, following a 4-4 draw, we looked at each other and turned for the exit simultaneously, ignoring Sunderland’s lap of honour. We collected the father of a friend to whom we’d given a lift, and drove back to Oxford. Only when we met my mam did we realise neither of us had spoken for over two hours (if, by any chance, Mr Wilkinson, you’re reading this, I apologise for our grumpiness).

My gran was cremated on January 6, the day Sunderland played away at Manchester United in the third round of the FA Cup. In the afternoon following the funeral, my dad drove me back to university. As we passed the end of Appley Terrace, Nicky Butt gave United the lead. There was, I think, almost a sense of relief. Neither of us would have said it, but I suspect we had both dreamed of some kind of send-off; this at least punctured those hopes early, and let them gently deflate. But then, in quick succession, Steve Agnew and Craig Russell scored. There may have been a snort at the ridiculousness of it all, but otherwise we were silent, recognising what this could mean. But there are, of course, no fates; there is no guiding force. Football does not hand out sentimental favours. Eric Cantona equalised with a late header and United won the replay.

A few weeks before my dad died, I signed a deal to write a biography of Brian Clough (it came out in November 2011; click this link – ed).

His memory was gone by then, ravaged by Alzheimer’s, but when I told him, I saw a flicker in his eyes. “Do you remember Clough?” I asked, talking, to be honest, for the sake of talking; he couldn’t have told me, by then, what day it was or what he’d had for lunch. “Of course I do,” he snapped, and went to talk about a hat-trick Clough had scored against Grimsby. Although I continued to visit every day, that was probably the last “proper” conversation we had.

Why do I bring this up? Well, it comes from trying to explain what being a fan means – to me. I realise this is personal, and I don’t want to suggest there’s a “right” way to be a fan, but supporting Sunderland was never a choice. It just was. I’ve spent a lot of time in Argentina and people, naturally, have asked if I have an Argentinian team. My then-girlfriend and her family are Boca Juniors fans, and so I tried to support them, but the truth was that I didn’t care. I didn’t feel sick with nerves when they took the lead, and I certainly didn’t feel tears pricking at my eyes when I recalled their greatest triumphs.

I don’t really like being so emotional about Sunderland, but I am. And of course it has nothing to do with whichever bunch of players happens to be wearing the candystripes this season. Nothing to do with the manager, the style of play or success. It’s to do with home, and family, and a sense of the club as representative of a strand of belonging stretching back generations. My dad’s last game was the 4-0 defeat to Manchester United on Boxing Day 2007, but in a sense he has been with me at every game I’ve been at since. What I hadn’t realised till last year is that his father, who died before I was born, had been coming with us for years as well.

* Jonathan Wilson is a hugely respected football writer and author of an acclaimed history of tactics, Inverting the Pyramid. He is also the editor of The Blizzard.

His biography of Brian Clough, Brian Clough: Nobody Ever Says Thank You can be be found here. Inverting the Pyramid is at this link. Ignore the “look inside” reference in the photograph. It works only from the Amazon site.

*

I am proud to say that permission has been received for the reproduction of this quite exceptional and moving account by Jonathan Wilson*, the Sunderland-supporting sportswriter and editor of The Blizzard, of memories of his dad, and an exchange as death approached, that summed up the passion handed down through generations …

** The above article first appeared at the SB Info Plus website at this link. We gratefully acknowledge permission from SB Indo Plus to publish it at Salut! Sunderland.


Colin Randall



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6 thoughts on “Tomorrow Everton. Today, probably the best article you’ll ever read about Sunderland”

  1. I have read the Jonathan Wilson article today, one day after the embarrassing, hapless display against Everton, where we have given them their best win for ages. I was in “I’m never going to renew” mode for the rest of Sunday and so far today. I’ve been asking myself why on earth I go there – it’s a 3 hour drive for me to get to the SoL – and then there was Jonathan’s article. My dad was Sunderland daft too – he lived into his 80’s and died while we were still at Roker Park and I sometimes feel his presence too when I go to the match. It’s prickling my eyes right now thinking about it. You are spot on, It’s a wonderful piece and reminds me that I can’t let go and makes me feel that you and tens of thousands of others are kindred spirits in this tough old world of Sunderland supporting. Thanks.

  2. I must have posted this three or four times now and it never ceases to gain a response, whether in the comments – see the link in my introduction – or by the sheer number of visits to the site it generates.

  3. A beautiful read which Is very moving. Bad enough that I read with tears in my eyes to then find my father had already commented (Hi Brian).

    I struggled with a lot of internal stuff until the birth of my children and football was the only relatively healthy manner of escapism. I didn’t choose this club, but ill be forever thankful that it was chosen for me as it saw me through so much.

    Having always found conversations difficult, the club always broke down my barrier with grandfather and father. There isn’t a game that goes by that I don’t think of both. I feel very fortunate that I went to a couple of games with both.

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