When there is Light at the end of the tunnel
Two fascinating TV shows portray the contrasting fortunes of a pair of football giants after relegation, writes Alan Tyers
‘They keep cheating on you, and you know you should break up with them’
Relegation. Going down. The drop. Football’s own version of death, of oblivion, of ceasing to be. That sporting failure, at once sadistically protracted and brutally blunt, is the subject of two current television shows, both of which are well worth your time.
Manchester United’s famous 1973-1974 exit from the old First Division is the subject of Too Good to Go Down,a BT Sport film shown the other night after a typically anaemic 2-2 draw with Arsenal. It airs again next week.
And Sunderland become the unlikely stars of their own eight-part Netflix series beginning this Friday, Sunderland ’Til I Die , with the streaming giant allowed excellent access to the North-east club in the 2017-18 season in which they attempted to bounce back immediately to the top flight after their David Moyes-helmed Premier League pratfall.
Spoiler alert: they do indeed get out of the second tier; alas, it is in the wrong direction. Sammy Mcilroy, in the United film, describes the 1974 plummet under Tommy Docherty as a “tragedy”, which of course it was not in anything other than a certain sporting sense. But the choice of word does reveal the huge weight of loss attached to a relegation.
Other contributors to the film argue that, in fact, the humiliation was the reset button the club needed in order to finally usher out the beloved, sandbagging ghosts of the Sir Matt Busby era and become the sporting, cultural and commercial behemoth that is today’s Super Manchester Reds at the Theatre Of Dreams™ in association with Adidas, Aeroflot, DHL and Toilet Duck.
Narrator John Cooper Clarke, whose staccato rasp is the perfect accompaniment to this tale of Northern soul and swagger, makes the irresistible observation of the wretched stasis that followed the retirement of a larger-than-life Scottish manager: “Sound familiar?”
If United were too big to fail, or at least not fail for too long, Sunderland are but one of many large-ish clubs desperately trying to keep their snouts in the Premier League trough.
The Netflix series is made by Fulwell 73, a production company set up by lifelong Sunderland fans that takes its name from a stand at Roker Park and the 1973 FA Cup win. It opens in a city church, the vicar urging the faithful to pray for their football club; the challenge for the film-makers was to make something that is not just preaching to the converted, to find something universal that will appeal to nonmackems.
They have succeeded admirably: the behindthe-scenes footage at the Stadium of Light of exasperated, beleaguered manager Simon Grayson and chief executive Martin Bain trying to corral a deeply disappointing set of exceptionally well-paid individuals chimes, as does the ashen fan despair as pre-season hope turns to the long slog of mediocrity and worse. Well, that’s football for you. Or for most of us. Perhaps that is why some non-united fans are enjoying the schadenfreude of the Jose Mourinho era after all their years of frictionless triumph.
After Sunderland’s pre-season 5-0 thumping at the hands of Celtic, one young woman sums up the football supporting experience: “Like being in a s--relationship: they keep cheating on you, and you know you should break up with them.”
And yet we do not, and we keep on keeping on. That maddening love is far more powerful than what division you are playing in, God help us, and it is that love that endures.
Too Good to Go Down (Thursday, Dec 20, 8pm, BT Sport 2); Sunderland ’Til I Die (Netflix, from Friday)