Having reflected on yesterday’s game and indeed the last few months of the season, I write this as a fan and nothing more.
Over the last decade we have lost our identity as a club, where is our pride, our arrogance about who we are, what coming from Sunderland and wearing the famous red and white stripes means to us?
The Stadium of Light should be somewhere that we as fans are excited to come, somewhere we spend the whole week dreaming about, somewhere that fills us with pride, makes the hair on the back of our neck stand on end, makes us feel 10ft tall. It should equally be somewhere that puts the fear of God into opposing fans and players. It should be the last place they want to come, somewhere they write off when the fixture list is released each year.
When was the last time any of us felt this way and more importantly how do we reclaim that identity and pride?
What we have in Sunderland is unique, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are 91 other Football League clubs but not one of them has our greatest attribute, our fans. We are a club steeped in the history of our City, bred and fed by the Monkwearmouth Colliery and the banks of the River Wear upon which we’re built. Our industrial heritage, our stubbornness, our community, put simply, we’re built different.
The need to own and celebrate our identity is on all of us. It’s on the club’s owners and board to recognise and exemplify, it’s on the players to demonstrate every single time they walk out on the pitch, regardless of what’s to play for, it’s on the manager to understand and deliver upon and it’s on us, the fans, in the way we show our support.
On Saturday when the current crop of players lucky enough to wear our badge, ran out onto a pitch that any fan would give their right arm to grace, wearing white shorts, to the Z Cars, we were reminded of our greatest ever, Charlie Hurley. The King exemplifies that identity we’ve lost and must reclaim, we all need to find the Charlie Hurley within us, owners, players, manager and fans, one club, one identity, one goal and a shit load of pride!
LEO PEARLMAN
FULWELL 73 LTD
NON EXEC DIRECTOR @ SUNDERLAND FOOTBALL CLUB
