Ross and Sunderland… it’s right riveting TV Aidan Smith
● Southerners trying to revive the fortunes of a quintessentially northern club with a Scotsman at the helm… the return of Netflix’s football reality show is not to be missd
One of the first grumbles you hear from a fan in the return of the best football reality show around is about the colour of the seats. If they were always filled at the Stadium of Light this would of course stop the sun fading them, but the phone-in caller presses on with his complaint. “They’re pink,” he says disgustedly.
Sunderland, of course, are red and white. Sunderland, of course, are a sleeping giant. Sunderland, though, seem to have been struggling for ever. They’re still struggling and stuck in England’s third tier at the end of the follow-up run of the Netflix show Sunderland ’Til Idie – this despite the efforts of a Scottish manager in Jack Ross and a goodly number of players who come down with him from north of the border – but if it’s any consolation their agonies make riveting telly.
As the title song and the club badge remind us, the riveting used to be done in the Wearside shipyards. Into this one-club city – “poor, northern, working-class, Brexit-voting” as it’s described at one point – come two southerners, one of whom admits he might be viewed as a pretentious southerner. This is Charlie Methven, who throws another shade of pink into the mix – the kind of vivid trousers you might expect to find on an Eton-educated ex-daily Telegraph journalist. Meet your new executive director, Black Cats fans. The rest of us: meet the star of the second series.
The other southerner is Stewart Donald, the new chairman. Together they’re frontmen for a “mysterious consortium” who take over the club at the start of 2018-19 following Sunderland’s second successive relegation. Donald, whose background is insurance, dubs
“Methven strides through the stadium innards, shaking things up. He quizzes a gathering of underlings on how much this ‘f **** d-up business’ pays in interest on debt. The faces stay blank. ‘You should know this,’ he snaps, ‘it was in my presentation to staff. Seven million pounds. That’s where all the ticket revenue goes’.”
the club “the biggest failure of a business I’ve ever seen”. The culture of decline must end, says Methven. “For too long Sunderland has been seen as a free wage, a free three points, a piss-take. The piss-take party stops now.”
In those fetching breeks, buckled loafers and shirtsleeves carefully rolled up the way David Cameron would take to the election hustings,
Methven strides through the stadium innards, shaking things up. He quizzes a gathering of underlings on how much this “f **** d-up business” pays in interest on debt. The faces stay blank. “You should know this,” he snaps, “it was in my presentation to staff. Seven million pounds. That’s where all all the ticket revenue goes.” He challenges them to “do something memorable in their careers”, help make the city happy and “stop people crying in church”. Then he changes the run-on music – too plodding – for some Ibiza trance.
Jack Ross gets on with his job quietly. Sunderland – with Jon Mclaughlin, below, and Alim Ozturk, both previously of Hearts, and ex-hibs midfielder Dylan Mcgeouch, left – make an encouraging start helped by a victory over Barnsley where Ross and his opposite number square up on the touchline. What do they say to each other? Maybe this...
Ross to Daniel Stendel (for it is he): “Just wait ’til we get up to Edinburgh – you won’t have a happy Christmas.”
Stendel: “Yes, but in the derby after that my team will run yours off the park.”
Ross, upon arrival at Hibs this season, admitted he was relieved at no longer being followed around by a TV crew.
Stendel, when he got to Hearts, walked straight into a docusoap. Why do clubs find fly-on-the-wall filming irresistible? Yes, there could be glory at the end but, as Sunderland found and Hearts may yet discover, things can go horribly wrong. They start going wrong for Sunderland when top scorer Josh Maja leaves in the January window and, despite Ross’s misgivings, Donald splashes £4 million on Will Grigg. Donald is keen to take credit for the signing right up until the moment Grigg struggles to score.
Why do businessmen find football irresistible? It’s a lot more exciting than insurance. Methven, too, is intoxicated. When Grigg is introduced to the Stadium of Light, he joins him for the walkabout. When Sunderland win on the day they break the crowd record for the third tier, he’s pitchside at the end to congratulate the players.
Methven is easy to mock, of course, with his Heseltine-esque hair and his version of the Sunderland battle-cry. “Ha’way the lads” becomes “Hey-wey the lads”. But he’s always down at the burger van chatting to the fans who roar their favourites to promotion play-off final at Wembley, but alas no further. The last words go to an oldtimer who’s seen this movie before: “Are we ever going to be good?”