It’s the hope that kills them, Sunderland fans can handle the despair. And it is a prevailing sense of hope that percolates throughout all eight episodes of a behind-the-scenes documentary chronicling the club’s relegation to the third tier of English football last season. Throughout a preposterously chaotic campaign, even by the standards of a club long considered utterly dysfunctional, Sunderland’s fans remain surprisingly upbeat, despite having grown wearily accustomed to coping with apparently bottomless levels of crushing disappointment.
Commissioned by Netflix, Sunderland ’Til I Die is a love letter to a city on its knees and the conspicuously wayward child its citizens cannot bring themselves to disown. Despite its proclivity for repeatedly letting them down, even as tears and booze flow during a maudlin pub sing-song following relegation to League One, the mood among locals is one of hope things will ultimately get better because, well … they cannot get much worse.
The series was produced by Fulwell 73, a company owned by Sunderland fans done good and named after a stand at Roker Park, the club’s former ground, along with a nod to their famous FA Cup win. Having expressed an interest in buying the club before shelving their plans, they were invited to film a documentary by the since departed American owner Ellis Short in the hope of creating the kind of buzz that might generate interest among other prospective purchasers. While they were granted astonishing behind-the-scenes access, viewers hoping for the kind of foul-mouthed dressing-room rants with which Peter Reid famously punctuated Premier Passions, the BBC programmes on the club’s 1996-97 relegation from the Premier League, will be disappointed.
The documentary begins in the considerably more genteel environs of St Mary’s church, where local padre Father Marc Lyden-Smith and his congregation are filmed appealing to God to grant the club’s players “self-belief and a spirit of confidence because the success of our team leads to the success and prosperity of our city”. While their exhortations prove too tall an order even for the big man upstairs, this correlation between the well-being of the club and its locale remains a recurring theme. The opening credits, soundtracked by the song Shipyards from the local band the Lake Poets, harks back to the city’s industrial past.
“Everybody in Sunderland has got a relation who’s either worked in the shipyards or worked in the pits, everybody,” says Peter Farrer on a drive through the city. “And unfortunately those jobs have gone. Not many people have had it easy in Sunderland. It is a hard place.” Farrer, a season-ticket holder of long standing and commendable optimism given the disappointments he and his people have been forced to endure in football as in life is one of many locals recruited to provide background and keep the story ticking over in place of a more traditional narrator.
This sense of riches to rags and loss is all-pervading. Within the confines of the club the new manager, Simon Grayson, is left in no uncertain terms he will be given little or no money to spend by an administration that has pulled off the staggering feat of spending a decade in the Premier League while somehow contriving to lose millions. While Short is an almost totally absent figure, his chief executive, Martin Bain, cuts a faintly ludicrous David Brent type, to whom we are first introduced as he finishes his morning swim at the training ground pool.
From the moment we are allowed to eavesdrop on a meeting between Bain, Grayson, and their player recruitment team, it becomes abundantly clear this rudderless ship that Bain, a former Rangers chief executive, very presciently likens to the Titanic is destined to meet a similar fate. Over the course of the series Sunderland lose 23 matches, one owner, one chief executive, two managers, several players and their place in the Championship. All Or Nothing: Manchester City, this certainly ain’t.
Some players feature prominently, others not so much. With Grayson long gone and Chris Coleman appointed in his place, Aiden McGeady breaks a long and dignified silence to assess the new gaffer’s methods with barely disguised contempt. Almost comically, the club gets through goalkeepers more quickly than Spinal Tap can shed drummers and the transformation of Jason Steele from optimistic arrival to tearful hologram utterly bereft of confidence is little short of harrowing.
Darron Gibson, a regular contributor until the termination of his contract after a drink-driving offence, at least conveys the impression he cares. The same cannot be said for Jack Rodwell, who generates fury by sitting tight on a salary rumoured to be £70,000 a week while in the treatment room or being forced to train with the kids after refusing to leave.
Sunderland ’Til I Die simultaneously showcases almost everything that is right and wrong with English football and the stoicism of the many fans and nervous employees to whom we are introduced sits in contrast with the borderline apathy and bungling incompetence of this local institution’s custodians. When relegation is confirmed with two games to go, the club finally changes hands and Coleman is ushered out of the door, but not before he and his players have the good grace to look suitably sheepish as they are applauded into the fans’ end-of-season awards. Before the final game, an emphatic win against the champions, Wolves, we are transported to the ticket office, where staff are astonished by the length of the queue snaking out of the door. Remarkably, a wonderful series that kicked off brimful of optimism Sunderland might get out of the Championship ends with similarly high hopes of a quick return.