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DISSECTION OF A DERBY - WHY WE HATE SUNDERLAND 30-1-06
It is a question that has puzzled me for some time now - why exactly do we hate Sunderland? After all it's not as if they have been doing better than us in recent years. Indeed with our Carling Cup success and regular forays into Europe, it is quite clear that the Boro have had the upper hand over our northern rivals for the last decade or so.
This has affected my personal view of the club as Sunderland have almost dropped off my radar altogether - a side to be pitied rather than derided because they are not on the same plain that we occupy. Even this season it can be argued that they are not much of a threat, which says quite a lot considering we are perched perilously above the drop-zone. They're down already and they (probably) won't catch us. So why the hatred, why the animosity for such an underachieving club? This is what I aim to find out in this article.
When we think of local rivals, the most important thing to think about is proximity. Generally, the closer two clubs are together, the stronger the rivalry. This works through two separate channels, namely either geography or through achievement. Thus Arsenal and Manchester United are major rivals because they have been competing at the same level and in the same competitions for a certain period of time. Meanwhile Newcastle and Sunderland are rivals because they are only ten miles apart.
When geography is considered it is clear that the closer two clubs are together, the greater an antipathy exists between the supporters of those clubs. Nothing highlights this more perfectly than the north-east triumvirate of Newcastle, Sunderland and the Boro. After all there is little denying that the most vitriolic rivalry in the north-east exists between the Skunks and the Mackems because of how close they are to each other. Indeed this is so much so that many Skunk and Mackem supporters don't even view the Boro as local rivals, often being far more fixated by the opposing side in the Tyne and Wear conurbation.
So how does geographical proximity play a part?
It is because football is a mark of local identity and when your team is playing that identity is put on the line. The pride of the town is often related to the success of the football club as this is one way an area can get guaranteed regular national media coverage. This is only enhanced when the team you are competing against is a local side because the natural competitiveness in humanity strives to be the top-dog in a certain region or territory. This too has ramifications on the national perception of that region.
Now this sounds primal but then it is an important facet of the human psyche. And football channels this - a feral tribal instinct that would generally not be accepted in the world outside the football stadium. Whether it is acceptable or not is another matter - I am not the only one who has likened football crowds to Neolithic tribes for example - but it appears to be par for the course that there is a large territorial aspect to local football rivalries.
Locality is also important because a win against your local rivals gives you bragging rights for the next six months. This is fuelled by the fact that it is far more common for you to be working with or to know people who support a local team than it is for you to know someone who supports a team from outside the region. This is enhanced by the banter of the office - football is a national obsession and one thing that can easily start a conversation. This builds up an intolerance to all of the teams that your work colleagues support as if you admit to supporting a particular team and someone else supports another side then by the time Barry from accounts has droned on about how great his side are for the 200th day in a row you have already built up a natural hatred towards the side he represents. And as most people in an office work with local people, then these interactions are more likely going to be manifested through a hatred of a local side rather than one further afield.
Indeed when I surveyed Boro fans on why they hate Sunderland, many came back with reasons relating to painful personal experiences earlier in their lives. These often involved ex-girlfriends, trips to Sunderland or attributes of Mackems that particularly grate with them, for example the accent.
All three are strongly connected to the fact that Sunderland is local. Firstly, if you hate Sunderland because of a particular Sunderland fan (for example an ex-girlfriend) then it is far more likely that you would have met them whilst living in the north-east yourself because the majority of people from Sunderland still live there. For similar reasons you are more likely to notice certain attributes of the Mackems whilst residing in the north-east yourself because we all get the same local news and television programming and thus Mackems are invited into our homes almost on a daily basis. Meanwhile it is simple logic that you are more likely to visit a place if you are local to that place than if it were on the other side of the country. All three result in a situation where you are immersed with people that you do not necessarily want to be with, and all this does is breed further contempt for the perceived grouping to which they belong.
Another angle to this debate is the fact that, like it or not, people from the north-east do all share a similar outlook on life, not to mention genetic history. The majority of people from this side of the country arrived here through the Viking invasions of the 7th century and were part of a country known as the Danelore. For the following 1500 years there was little migration of people from this region, or indeed from anywhere, because the only form of fast transportation before 1850 was the boat. Thus the furthest one ever travelled was often to the local town on market day and this led to the formation of particular pockets of people around the country. Villagers married villagers and it was very rare to see anyone that was an outsider to your own little conclave. This is how accents for one, started to develop.
Thus the problems arise in the fact that because we are so similar to the Mackems we feel a sense of hatred towards them. This is because like the antipathy present in the archetypal family unit we are so similar to each other that it is almost impossible to get on. Yet conversely, because we are so similar, we should have greater understanding of each other. Thus as one contributor in my survey said: 'I've never understood why football fans hate fans from the place closest to them geographically - surely they should be the friendliest.' But all this does in reality is lead to frustration. And that is part of the problem - familiarity does breed contempt and with local news and a sense of knowing these people throughout our recent history, that contempt merely festers and explodes on the football pitch.
A lot of the responses I received seem to reflect a vitriol that seems to be more engrained - one that is harder to rationalise than merely the fact that they are local. Maybe hating local rivals has become an automatic response - after all stating that the Mackem's 'smell' appears to be a defensive reaction against the questioning of someone's opinion rather than anything more concrete. It makes little sense as a direct reply to the question yet at the same time appears to highlight the fact that the hatred against the Mackems appears to transcend rationality and attach itself to something more fundamental in the human psyche. Either that or it is acceptable to loathe them because they are local and that, in turn, football gives them a good excuse to loathe them in a society that is built on acceptance and tolerance.
This also appears to be the case by the continual abhorrence of arrogance that was a common reply to my question. Many accused the Mackems of being big-headed over their past achievements and this can be viewed in two ways. Being Boro fans we have had to accept that our history, at least in terms of winning anything, has been one of underachievement. This is also something that, through the territorial domination reasons discussed earlier, rival fans are keen to point out. But this goes much further.
Humans by their very nature are insecure - they need constant reassurance that they are doing and have done the right thing - and one way this is manifested is through the 'winning team' mentality. Thus in claiming a top dog place over a rival, what people in a particular group are doing is giving legitimacy to their joining that group in the first place. In effect they are congratulating themselves for having the foresight and the intelligence to make the right decision. This is only enhanced in terms of local rivalries because there was more chance (through their contact with fans of the rival team) that they could have chosen the rival over the choice that they made. And from here on in there is a case of substantiating that choice at every available opportunity - it acts like a comfort blanket if you will.
This relates to age old notions of power. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was believed throughout Europe that power was a finite entity and that the only way you gained it was to usurp it from someone who already had it. Local rivalries exist in a similar way - by beating your rival group you build yourself up at the expense of your opponent. And this relates back to the day when the decision was made that you would follow one tribal group over another. And for the losing side this manifests itself as a perceived arrogance in the winner - a human emotion that many feel difficult with because of the lack of humility associated with it. Added to this is many individual's perception that this arrogance is a direct attack on them for making the wrong decision and this merely perpetuates the fires of hatred.
Another common way of denigrating one's rivals, and one that was often employed by many of my correspondents was to compare them to an even greater threat. In the case of north-east football, because the Mackems were 'arrogant like the Skunks' this automatically meant that they were to be derided. This is an interesting phenomenon and one that many people gave for adding a greater legitimacy to their hatred of the Mackems.
Thus in conclusion, love is an all-encompassing entity but it is only one aspect of the emotional spectrum. Hatred is an important and indeed necessary facet of human nature and often people find an inner security through their abhorrence of certain things. And one way this hatred can manifest itself is through local rivalries. Now this could be perceived as a form of racism - indeed many of the comments I have heard and read since supporting the Boro a decade ago could, if they had been made about a particular race of people, been classed as racist.
But local rivalries seem to be encompassed in a spirit of competition and banter that is present throughout the sporting world. They seem to be an acceptable face of group hatred - where for ninety minutes you can detest, despise and loathe your local rivals as long as you buy each other a pint at the end. Granted this is an antiquated view and one that doesn't quite fit with reality but its legacy still lives on. But through the drudgery of the office or through the frustration of life, such rivalries often seem to pull us through and give us something to hate. Hate in an acceptable and controlled way, but hate nonetheless.
Is it racist? Is it exclusionist? Not really. As one Leeds supporter I once met put it: 'I deplore all forms of hatred, bigotry and exclusion on the grounds or race, colour, creed or religion but I fucking hate Manchester United fans'.
I would like to thank all the fans who made this article possible. I have decided to preserve anonymity partly through request and partly through the personal nature of some of what was sent to me. But all your efforts are very much appreciated.
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