There is a strange quirk of old friends: no matter how long they’ve been apart from one another, as soon as they’re back in company together they immediately regress to old speaking and behavioural patterns. It’s why when University friends meet up decades after graduation they immediately start shouting loudly about girls they both slept with in Freshers' week and punishing each other for drinking with their left hand, and lots of other zany things they would be embarrassed about doing in front of their new, adult friends- adult friends who, in some instances, don’t even know they were once part of the rugby society.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, I like to consider Sunderland a friend. Not a good one, as such, not one whose company you look to keep (when people ruminate on Newcastle's relegation a few years back I like to propose the theory that it was done simply because keeping up pretences with Sunderland, who had always before done- in the form of several relegations of their own- what they could to be gone out of our lives every other season, was becomming simply too tiring), but a companion of sorts, somebody to keep us company as everybody else jets around the place, sometimes not even paying attention at all to Newcastle United (unless we’re sacking our manager that week). As the ear splitting reception their team received as they switched sides before kick off will testify, we have missed them, as well, in a way. I only hope their substitutes and coaching staff realise this and have the good manners to return us the elastic bands that were playfully flicked in their direction as promptly as possible. And, as we’re friends, it was only natural they regressed to their normal behaviour when they’re with us and, as we’re Newcastle fans, it was highly amusing to remember that their normal behaviour when they’re with us is to be absolutely bloody awful.
Seriously. Sunderland came in to this game on the back of seven unbeaten games in a run that included Arsenal, Man Utd and Liverpool (the fixture list mixing it up and giving them a bit of an easy one there); they have, we were told by their fans, some good players, as one would hope they would do for the money they’ve spent. But they’re Sunderland, and we’re Newcastle United, and their belief in their team and the acknowledged weaknesses in our own was overpowered by these two simple truths. For all their bluster, they know and so do we. And that haunted look on Titus Bramble’s face as he got red carded, the one that seemed to flicker with just the briefest flick of recognition, that was because...well, that was because he always looks like that. But he probably knows it too.
Also, we have a better team. It’s easy to imagine that we wouldn’t, but I would take our centre backs over theirs, I would take Joey Barton over Jordan Henderson, Jonas and Malbranque are much of a muchness, Tiote will have Cattermole to play with, Carrol is better than Gyan and Kevin Nolan has now scored more goals this season from midfield than the amount of Sunderland fans that were left in the stadium to see his third one in this game. (Incidentally, any Sunderland complaints that they weren’t up for it on account of Henderson being the only Sunderland supporter in the team are surely tempered by the fact that this meant on ninety minutes that he was the only Sunderland supporter in the ground- their team weren’t the only spineless bottlers.) What’s that leave us? Bent? Yeah, we’ll have him- he could always get a run out in the cup games if he could learn to play in a team properly and not strop about the place looking like he’s forgotten his twitter password.
Their joy in the wake of our relegation? Premature. Their hubris about how much better they were than our collection of Championship plodders and has-beens? Misplaced. It was rubbed in their face in this game in the most sickening and unpalatable way imaginable- honestly, it must have been simply ghastly for them- and it’s tacky to gloat any further really. Some clubs make banners and hang them over the Tyne Bridge to demonstrate their joy in their rival’s failings, others prefer to do their talking on the pitch.
Still, nice to see they’re keeping well. If they ask, we’re busy right through until January. We can’t play them every week, more's the pity.
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