James Copley: They laughed at Sunderland and we lived through it. Wednesday is yours – enjoy every second
After 53 years and so much heartache, Sunderland’s European return is a night to cherish with the people who kept you coming back.
Before the football starts on Wednesday, take a moment to look around. At the people beside you, the faces you have spent years travelling with, whoever first made Sunderland matter to you. Get a photograph together, even if somebody complains. There will come a day when you are glad you did.
Sunderland against AZ Alkmaar. European football at the Stadium of Light. We have had time to get used to the idea, yet there is still something wonderful about saying it aloud. For so many of us, following Sunderland into Europe belonged to folklore. Now we get to tell our own stories.
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53 years have passed since the Cup Winners’ Cup campaign that followed the 1973 FA Cup win. Children who watched those games are grandparents now. Nobody leaving Roker Park that autumn could have known how long the wait would be, how much life would happen between European fixtures, or who would be missing when Sunderland finally returned.
Think about everything a family can live through in that time. Children born, houses moved, weddings, funerals. The person who took you to your first match getting older, until you were the one collecting them. Through all those changes, Sunderland gave you something familiar to talk about. Sometimes, when other conversations were difficult, it gave you a reason to ring.
That helps explain why people kept coming back when the football offered so little. There was still the afternoon together, the same meeting place, someone expecting you in the next seat. We became good at finding something to enjoy in a dreadful day. We learned to laugh at ourselves, although some journeys home were beyond even that.
19 points in 2003, then 15 in 2006, setting a new Premier League low each time. Charlton Athletic at Wembley in 1998 and 2019. Crystal Palace on penalties. Lincoln City ending another promotion bid. Successive relegations, followed by four seasons in League One. How often did we sit in traffic afterwards, barely speaking, before somebody finally offered a reason why next season might be different?
Our first team lost at home to Leicester City’s youth side. Mansfield knocked us out of the FA Cup. Twice. There were afternoons when attending felt like fulfilling an obligation, and that was perhaps the saddest thing. People were spending money they had worked hard for, giving up precious time, and wondering why on earth they were putting themselves through it again.
Ellis Short sold Sunderland down the river, and then some. Under Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven, a club that meant everything to so many was reduced to a punchline. Netflix’s Sunderland ’Til I Die broadcast their dysfunction and incompetence to the world, making us the butt of jokes from fans everywhere. They could switch it off when they’d had enough. We had to live with it.
Managers came and went, money disappeared into dreadful recruitment, and Jack Rodwell and Papy Djilobodji became reminders of expensive failure. There always seemed to be another explanation for why things had gone wrong, another request for patience. Eventually, allowing yourself to believe felt foolish. It was exhausting to care so much about a club you increasingly struggled to recognise.
Yet people kept buying tickets, arranging lifts, booking time off and taking their children. They rang their dad afterwards to have the same argument as the previous Saturday. Declared they were finished, then returned the following week. They had every reason to be angry. Sunderland mattered enough to them that they could never quite manage indifference.
Wednesday is a reward for that persistence. Those supporters will watch their city represented in Europe by a team they can feel proud of. The results matter, of course they do, but so does being able to look at the players and feel your affection for Sunderland being returned. We went without that feeling for far too long.
Wherever you watch, make something of it. At the stadium, in the pub, at home or overseas. Ring the person you usually discuss Sunderland with. Tell someone you are pleased to be watching it with them. We are good at arguing about substitutes and missed chances. Sometimes we leave the important things unsaid.
There will be someone you wish you could ring. Someone whose opinion you already know, whose seat you still glance towards, who would have spent Wednesday morning talking about nothing else. Their absence might catch you when the teams come out. Think of them. They helped make this club yours, and you are allowed to miss them while enjoying it.
Hopefully, European nights become familiar. But even if Sunderland qualify again next year, we cannot guarantee we will be watching with the same people. The fixtures will come around; our circumstances will change. 53 years makes that impossible to ignore. Some supporters have waited a lifetime for this. Others ran out of time.
These could be the halcyon days we talk about for the rest of our lives. One day, somebody beside you might tell their children about Sunderland’s first European night at the Stadium of Light and remember sharing it with you. So get that photograph. Sing your heart out. After everything, enjoy being here together.