Newcastle: Sunderland rivals or just pity cases?

By Sulla
March 3 2005

There was a time when I used to look forward to Derbies, with a mixture of fear and anticipation, a win would make my week, hell at points in the 80’s it could make my footballing year, a loss to the great unwashed and I would feel dreadful for weeks, often months.

But now, nothing! And there is a reason for this, we once played rivals, now in the unlikely event that we ever play in the same league again, we are playing a team that are more to be pitied than feared.

So I have to ask myself why did this happen, so I looked into how it all started.

1st) The us and them syndrome: There are several explanations as to why we hate the mackems, the ships yards are often mentioned, different sides in the English civil war. But they are all wide of the mark; the trouble is they are a different species. And this is not racist by a long chalk, speciest maybe, but certainly not racist.

When modern man first came out of Africa and made his way across the icy wastes of Europe, he displaced, older, less intelligent species, like the Neanderthals, now this happened every where, except in Sunderland, where by some strange geographical quirk, they managed to hold on and flourish.

Notice the sloped brows? The tendency to hire managers and players with starling simian qualities? They might not be that much good on the pitch, but you watch Reid and Philips climbing a tree, I am sure you will be impressed.

2nd) Shell suits, there are small Chinese girls, working 23 hours a day in a sweat shop merely to keep the population of Sunderland clothed. You can always tell when they are off to a mackem wedding, as the shell suit has been freshly ironed.

3rd) Sunderland itself, if having to live in Sunderland was not reason alone for pity then I don’t know what is. I mean it has to be one of the few places of the planet where nuclear war could actually raise property prices.

4th) there is the football team itself, worse ever side to grace (if that is the right word) the Premiership and if anything the lot they have now are worse, hell it could be almost worth watching there fleeting moment of happiness if they scraped through the play offs, just to see, the look on their furry brows as they come straight back down with even less points than last time.

So I say, to all Geordies, remember, we were lucky enough to be born a superior breed, please by all means feel free to look down your noses, but do it with pity.