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a fire test too, so we decided to pull the whole thing. In the week after the match one of us had to drive back down to Wembley to pick the banners up.”
“The match was great but that wasn’t a great experience. The worst bit was that we felt we were letting people down. People had really bought into this and given us a huge amount of money. We were really worried about what the reaction would be, but we couldn’t have been more encouraged by how people reacted. They supported us and the appreciation for what we had done was still there. In many ways what happened at Wembley was a good thing. We learned a lot from the whole experience and it now gives us the opportunity to put something really special on for the first game back in the Championship; something for the people of this city in a place they call home.
It’s special.”
So is this the last we will see of SO37?
“God no. We already have displays mapped out
for some big occasions this season. It’s going to rely on more donations from fans of course but we have already picked the games that we want to target and mapped out the designs. This one is a whole stadium thing, the others we’re concentrating on The Roker End. In between the big displays we’re looking to restock the flags and just create that Roker End identity. I think it’s really important to have that. People talk about the yellow wall or the Kop or the Stretford End or whatever. We want people to talk about The Roker End and more than that we want fans to be proud of the fact that they sit in The Roker End, the singing end. The changes in the stadium this season kind of help with that in a way because it gives it an “End” effect.”
“In a 360 degree bowl it’s difficult to get an “End” but the changes kind of create that. The club are keen to support what we’re doing because they can see the benefit in terms of the team but also in terms of making the SoL atmosphere really attractive. It all starts with the donations though. We’ve set up a website now so people can just drop in and donate or even sign up to a monthly donation. When you think about it, if every person walking through the gates put £1 in every match we could have huge displays all the time. We’d probably have to give up our day jobs to sort it and probably split up with our partners as well though.”
Why do you want to remain anonymous to the fans who have given you their money?
“We didn’t want this to become a thing where it’s about our names, or egos. This is about the Roker End, it’s about the fans and all the volunteers who give up their spare time to set all this up. It’s about
the great people at the printers who are busting a gut
to get things out for us because they’re fans too. If
we put our names out there, then it seems more of an ego trip. At the end of the day, we just want to be in a ground with a great atmosphere. The word Tifo comes from the Italian for Typhoid fever so it’s basically trying to set a fever running through the fans. That’s the aim. Who’s doing it doesn’t matter really. Of course, we take a bit of personal pride in what we’re doing but we want to get to a position where it’s not just the five of us in a WhatsApp group sorting it all out. We want people to buy into it all and to own it themselves. My son who’s 12 gets involved in the whole thing and ultimately he could be leading SO37 in years to come. We want this to be a lasting legacy.”
Any words on the volunteers who help?
“They’re amazing. We started all this while working with Red And White Army using flags that A Love Supreme bought, just to set the flag display up and loads of those volunteers have carried on into what we’re doing with SO37. It feels like a proper little family now and seeing those familiar faces putting a shift in is heart-warming. They love it too. You really cannot explain that swell
of pride when you see it all go off knowing that you’ve contributed to the whole thing. The volunteers have that. Football is a weird thing sometimes; you pour so much hope into the performance of one team and you have absolutely no control over what happens. The only thing
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