Page 17 - 364645 LP243221 A Love Supreme 48pp A5 Aug22

TOBEA
BY LORENZO CORSI
ALOVESUPREME
ISSUE259
17
PROUD MACKEM
Aged just 17, my time as a Sunderland fan has hardly been filled with glory. For me, supporting Sunderland has been far from as smooth as a Carlos Edwards volley, and it seems to me people outside of our mad corner of the world always see us the same way, because of our rocky journey over the last decade.
When on holiday, upon hearing my accent the topic always seems to stray onto football. This leads to the inevitable question of “So who do you support then?” I can remember countless similar conversations and my new acquaintance’s response to hearing that I’m a proud Mackem usually consists of being “That’s unfortunate” or, for those who this information seems to shock into silence, simply “oh.” I never fully understood this as a young lad. After all, who was going to tell 9-year-old me that we may in fact not be by far the greatest team the world has ever seen?
As time went on it slowly dawned on me the reason why people expected me to be ashamed of the club I loved so much. Still, I was yet to falter in my confidence and pride in saying Sunderland as when I thought of my club, I thought not of
our precarious position at the bottom end of the top flight, but of our successes over the Scum up the road, and of our packed fortress of a ground, where I grew up dreaming. That was of course, until I was faced with back-to-back relegations that followed. Like many of us it was easy to feel my faith in the club start to fade, with every loss and every inevitable disappointment.
But finally the elusive promotion season I had heard so much about came knocking, and with
it we cast out the last of our Wembley curses. And wasn’t it just the therapy we needed? So, now when asked where my allegiances lie, its funny to hear how people’s reactions have been altered simply on the back of one game played against Wycombe. The disappointed “oh” seems to have been replaced with a more optimistic “oh wow” and usually some generic comment about the aforementioned greatest footballing moment I have witnessed.
Now, heading into the new season, under a relatively new manager who has now had the time
to further craft his vision of his squad, I can’t help but feel as excited about our club. The same excitement I felt when I still small enough for dad to put me on his shoulders when we scored (although admittedly there was never much to really celebrate). It’s time that as a fanbase we all, as I’m sure we all do, take full pride that we are out of League One.
One day will this be the story my children will laugh at, in comparison to their childhoods as Sunderland fans, which will of course be spent watching silverware stream into our trophy cabinet. At the end of the day, this bright future for our club of which many of us dream, is built on the dreams of our parents, and our faith too, which just about scraped through the worst years in the history of a proud football club. So next time you are asked who you support, say it with the pride we deserve to feel as the Championship beckons...