Almost two years ago, in the moments that followed a comfortable FA Cup third-round win over Sunderland, Newcastle United’s players and staff gathered at the Stadium of Light’s northern end.
There, they posed for a team picture in front of their 6,500 travelling supporters, adding the full stop to a humbling 3-0 defeat for their north-east neighbours and arch rivals. It was the planting of a black and white flag on Wearside soil, an illustration of Sunderland being put in their place.
Much has changed for them since those limp days under Michael Beale’s management and a season about to unravel in the second-tier Championship, but Sunderland, it is now clear, had not forgotten.
“Someone mentioned the picture Newcastle made a few years before,” Sunderland goalkeeper Robin Roefs told reporters after the clubs met again at the Stadium of Light as Premier League peers on Sunday. “We were being told the last time they won here, they were making pictures in front of our fans. We used this as extra motivation.”
Forty-seven members of squad and staff, including head coach Regis Le Bris, came together as darkness fell yesterday to be pictured in the same penalty area that had seen Nick Woltemade’s header sent beyond his own goalkeeper, Aaron Ramsdale, an hour earlier.
“A little bit of karma,” Sunderland captain Granit Xhaka told BBC Radio Newcastle.
Speaking in his press conference, Le Bris added: “We have players who have been here for a long time, so they probably know better than the new ones how important this derby is, especially when you have lost the previous one.”
Sunderland’s head coach was asked if that moment had been planned before the 1-0 home win. “Always unpredictable, creative, adaptive,” he smiled, adding that Michael Proctor, the former Sunderland striker and now first-team coach, had delivered a speech to the dressing room afterwards. Defender Luke O’Nien, one of the few survivors from that FA Cup meeting, had also stepped up to add his own words.
Nick Woltemade scores his own goal to decide Sunday’s match (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
How Sunderland have changed in the intervening years. Promotion to the Premier League through the play-offs in May presented this uncertain opportunity for growth, and the 26 points collected from their first 16 top-flight games might yet bring survival into view before the calendar year is out. Christmas will now be celebrated above Newcastle in the table, too.
“Now it’s a question of being composed,” said Le Bris, who will see six players fly off to Africa Cup of Nations duty today, including yesterday’s starters Noah Sadiki, Bertrand Traore, Chemsdine Talbi and Reinildo Mandava.
Composure, though, felt like it could wait in the aftermath of the narrow victory. The Stadium of Light was desperately slow to empty, with fans reluctant to let go of a day that ended with Sunderland seventh in the table. It is a quarter of a century since a Sunderland team last had this many Premier League points by the middle of December. That run in 2000 included a 2-1 win away to Newcastle.
This, again, was a mix of local, parochial and international. The two starting XIs demonstrated that the last of those factors has taken over on the pitch. The teams contained just two local players, both in the Newcastle line-up — Dan Burn and Lewis Miley. Sunderland had never before fielded a team lacking an Englishman in this derby.
It was not always this way, as the saddening news of the death of Sunderland great Gary Rowell on the eve of the game reminded. Rowell came from nearby Seaham and scored goal after goal for the club, 103 of them in 297 appearances. That three of them came in a derby at Newcastle in 1979 endeared him forever to the Wearside faithful, and the shock at his passing at age 68 genuinely stunned fans.
To the tune of Yellow Submarine, those fans used to sing “We all live in a Gary Rowell world”, and 10 minutes before kick-off, the opening bars played over the speakers and led to a stadium-wide rendition of that old favourite. There was then a minute’s applause, in which Newcastle’s supporters participated. Rowell meant something to them, too.
Rowell was given his Sunderland debut by another man who both sets of fans understood — Bob Stokoe. The former manager’s energetic statue outside the Stadium of Light, not far from a Rowell mural, salutes an FA Cup hero to Newcastle as a player and an FA Cup hero to Sunderland as a coach. The difference between these two sides may not be as great as some proclaim.
Touching the foot of Stokoe’s statue is a supporter ritual. More than two hours before kick-off, there were Sunderland fans doing just that. Bradley Sharp, 34, and his 14-year-old son Archie were two of them. “We’ve done it since I first came with granda and my dad,” Bradley says. “Touching the boot, it’s something we’ve done since I started bringing him along.”
They are too young to have seen Rowell play, but they understand his significance.
Tributes were paid pre-match to Gary Rowell (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
“Gary Rowell was born in Seaham, a local lad, and played for the club he loves,” Sharp added. “He lived everybody’s dream. He scored the famous hat-trick against these (Newcastle), and he passed away on the 50th anniversary of his debut. So it’s poignant. Everyone who’s here today will dream of doing what he did.”
Andy Towers did see Rowell in action. Towers, too, had just touched Stokoe’s foot. “He was a good player, a goalscorer,” Towers says of Rowell, “and he was a local lad, which made a difference to us. I saw him play — I’m 77. He was just a Sunderland hero, and he was local. You don’t see that as much anymore, it’s become rare. There are so many foreign players now.”
Where this fixture has not changed is in the stands. There it remains as it was — fiercely local and fiercely committed. But on Sunday all saw a match, which was hardly of international class, settled by Woltemade, a German from Bremen.
Bill McGarry was the Newcastle manager the day Rowell got his hat-trick at St James’ Park. McGarry said after that match: “Rowell is, quite simply, a gift.”
Maybe it was fitting that Sunderland received another yesterday.