Walker Up There

The North-East, Football, Boom & Bust
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-909245-17-4
Verlag: deCoubertin Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 274 Seiten

Throughout the 20th century the North-East of England was synonymous with heavy industry and football. Coal mining, railways and ship-building provided an economic base upon which football - professional and amateur - flourished. Middlesbrough, Newcastle United and Sunderland all established themselves as national forces by winning League titles, FA Cups and by breaking records in the transfer market and in stadium attendances. They helped shape the area's identity, its sense of itself and the country's idea of the North-East.

Michael Walker first arrived in the north-east as a student in 1984. Ten years later he returned as a football reporter for The Guardian. He has been there ever since working also for The Observer, The Independent and Daily Mail. In 2006 he was commissioned by The Irish Times to write a season-long series on Sunderland, then Irish-owned and with Roy Keane as manager. Those articles formed the germ of the idea of this book.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Walker, Michael

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

2 MARCH 2014. Down and down, grey concrete step after grey concrete step until the bowels of Wembley stadium are reached. The descent is all but silent and there will be no joy at the end of it. We have come to hear the losers speak.

In the steepling press room the Sunderland manager Gus Poyet answers questions in English and Spanish, speaking of his pride as well as his disappointment. It is brief. Sunderland have failed better, but they have failed again. Poyet can say only so much.

Manchester City 3 Sunderland 1 in the League Cup final meant another year is added. It will now be at least 42 years since Sunderland visited Wembley and took home the silverware. The veterans of the 1973 FA Cup win over Leeds United will be another year older, their memories will need dusting down again.

But the nature of Sunderland’s performance, strong and coherent, also meant the 35,000-odd fans climbing on buses and trains, meeting at petrol stations and platforms, could take a sense of spirited defeat with them back to Wearside. The night before the game had seen a friendly red and white striped invasion of Covent Garden. Sunderland had enjoyed themselves, fans spoke of a renewal of belief in their club. There was something to cling to.

Yet they were returning up the M1 and east coast main line without the cup. Middlesbrough’s victory in the same competition on the same weekend ten years earlier remained the last time the north-east was the home of a major trophy, meaning the north-east had still won one trophy in more than four decades.

This book is called Up There for a reason and it is not football’s standard usage of up there, when a player or manager employs it to describe success: so-and-so is ‘up there’ with the best.

The reason is geographic. It reflects the sense of apartness and difference that the north-east feels internally, and to the rest of England, certainly historically. Part of that is distance, part of it was industry and part of it is political. Part of it is football.

The north-east’s deep feeling for football is part of the region’s character. It is riveted to the game. The same can be said of Merseyside, Manchester, areas of London and elsewhere in England, but if there is a difference, it is that the north-east’s attachment has not been maintained by success.

In other places the month of May has frequently brought silverware and celebration; in the north-east May has often confirmed emptiness and a long wait until the next season. In that sense, it’s not up there.

Middlesbrough did win that League Cup in 2004 and reached the Uefa Cup final two years later, while Newcastle United were Champions League group-stage participants three times between 1997 and 2004.

But Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland have each been relegated since Boro’s League Cup and over a prolonged period of time stretching back to the 1950s and even before the Second World War, the three ‘big’ north-east clubs have been down as often as they have been middling, never mind up there.

Middlesbrough have never been champions of England or won the FA Cup. Sunderland have not been league winners since 1936, Newcastle since 1927, before the Tyne Bridge was completed. The year 2015 will mark the 60th anniversary of Newcastle’s last domestic trophy, the 1955 FA Cup. Sixty years.

This could be a geographic quirk. An area of such supportive desire would be expected to have achieved more, much more. In recent times, as Premier League salaries have mushroomed and foreign players have spoken of wanting to go ‘to London’ as opposed to any particular club there, the north-east trio have had to work harder to get players up there. Working harder usually translates as higher wages and this has knock-on effects.

Historically this was not the case. The north-east had players on the doorstep. Issues then were competence and complacency rather than geography.

England’s World Cup-winning brothers Jack and Bobby Charlton came from Ashington in Northumberland and both supported Newcastle United but Bobby joined Manchester United and Jack joined Leeds United. Their mother’s cousin was ‘uncle’ Jackie Milburn, Newcastle hero, but the Milburn family had a dim view of how Newcastle treated young players.

That ranks as professional incompetence, as does Newcastle’s opinion that they could do without a miner’s son from Co. Durham called Colin Bell.

Between the World Cups of 1962 and 1990 England had, among many north-eastern others, this quartet of midfielders: Bobby Charlton, Colin Bell, Bryan Robson and Paul Gascoigne. Only Gascoigne joined a local club as a boy.

When Newcastle were in a two-way fight with Southampton for a sheet metal-worker’s son from Gosforth, Alan Shearer moved down there.

In 1938 Bob Paisley wanted to join Sunderland. His local club said no, so he joined Liverpool and won the league title as a player and then did a bit more at Anfield after that. In 1965 Sunderland had Brian Clough on their staff as youth team coach. They let him go to Hartlepool United.

Recognising the extraordinary talent in either man would have changed Sunderland’s history.

As for Middlesbrough, in 1952 they had a managerial vacancy and interviewed a 39-year-old Scot. In its wisdom the board chose not to appoint Bill Shankly.

‘Missing that job was a terrible disappointment,’ Shankly said, ‘because I was bubbling with ideas and Middlesbrough had a good ground and a lot of useful players. Before the war they’d had one of the best footballing teams in Britain. Ayresome Park represented potential, just as Liverpool did.’

Wilf Mannion is probably still weeping. Two years later Boro were relegated and did not return to the First Division until 1974.

Shankly was so eager for the job he had booked a room in Ripon overnight. That dramatic mistake had nothing to do with geography.

Yet as an example of fervour in the face of failure, over 200,000 people clicked through the turnstiles at St James’ Park for four Newcastle United games from the end of November 2013 – an average of 50,572 to see Stoke City as well as Arsenal.

On Wearside, nearly 180,000 attended five Sunderland matches in that same pre and post-Christmas period. And on Teesside an average of 18,500 saw Middlesbrough play Bolton, Brighton, Burnley and Reading in the Championship.

That last figure may not be particularly impressive in the context of English football, but Middlesbrough were 18th in its second division and into their fifth season outside the Premier League.

One measure of the club’s health was that local-hero manager Tony Mowbray had been sacked eight days earlier. Boro were in a slump.

Another measurement of Teesside health came in the same month Mowbray departed: Middlesbrough Football Club opened a food bank. A Save the Children survey revealed 34 per cent of Middlesbrough children living in poverty, 12 per cent higher than the national average. Middlesbrough Football Club, it could be said, were trying to sell tickets to a population they were helping to feed.

Sunderland also began December 2013 in the midst of managerial flux. Those thousands entering the Stadium of Light turned up to see the club bottom of the Premier League. Regulars knew a relegation battle when they saw one.

Sunderland had started 2013 with Martin O’Neill as their manager. There were then a torrid, florid few months with Paolo Di Canio in charge and as December dawned, Poyet was Sunderland’s eighth manager in seven years.

Only Newcastle United could lay a claim on good form. A club of consistent unpredictability, Newcastle had retained Alan Pardew for three years and after winning four league games in November, Pardew was named Manager of the Month. The following week Newcastle won a league match at Old Trafford for the first time since 1972.

It was a moment for historic reflection. Between 1972 and 2013 Manchester United won 13 league titles, eight FA Cups, four League Cups, one European Cup Winners’ Cup and, above all, two European Cups. Traditionally, that is how a club nurtures and sustains a fanbase.

Newcastle United’s trophies of note in that period were for winning the second division, in 1993 and 2010.

But that ‘Division One’ trophy of 1993 is not insignificant. It shows where Newcastle had been when the Premier League was formed. Newcastle United were not in it and Sunderland were not in it. Middlesbrough were the north-east’s sole representatives in the breakaway enterprise that would transform football. And in the Premier League’s inaugural season, Middlesbrough were relegated. Ayresome Park’s average attendance was 16,700.

Sunderland were almost relegated as well that season. It would have been to the third division. Rattling through three managers in a year once again – Malcolm Crosby, Terry Butcher and Mick Buxton – Sunderland finished one place above Brentford. Roker Park averaged 17,000.

At least at St James’ Park, where nearly 30,000 were cramming in, there was some hope gathering. Much of this centred on Kevin Keegan, arguably the most important man in north-east football since the Second World War.

Keegan combined charisma, talent, experience and economics. Most importantly, he came.

Keegan brimmed with enthusiasm for an area where his great-grandfather is saluted in song as a coalmining hero. Frank Keegan was in the Stanley Pit Disaster of 1909 in which 168 men...