The Tyne-Wear Derby: Newcastle vs. Sunderland

The Tyne-Wear derby between Newcastle and Sunderland doesn’t really fit a particular category in the way that we can compartmentalize most of the world’s greatest derbies. It’s a regional derby by definition, a North East derby, but one of the size and magnitude typically reserved for those of the cross-town variety. The importance seems that much more, particularly when considering neither has been guaranteed same division status of recent, leaving it wandering aimlessly somewhere in the middle. Something like Sunderland this week after suffering a good old fashioned derby beat down on the weekend.

The type of beatdown which will reflect giddy laughter and somber reflection from the Sunderland crowd, if not an existential crisis. A 5-1 scoreline and heaps of embarrassment.

The roots are simple: the cities of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Sunderland are just down the road from one another. Two cities in such proximity will have a history and that history will inevitably one day, should the clubs be of a certain quality, involve football. And it certainly helps that both are situated on rivers, at least for naming purposes.

The modern derby has gained something of importance in that 9 out of the 19 Premier League seasons, with Sunderland doing much of the yo-yoing down to the Championship, but Newcastle also doing its part just last year. Waiting a year or two in between gives these games all the more grandeur, with Steve Bruce, he of black and white love.

Just, for comparison purposes, imagine Alan Shearer even putting on a Sunderland shirt. Would never happen.

In doing a bit of reading, the following short video was found, a really excellent little documentary (truly little – 5 minutes), detailing a bit of the history surrounding the derby and the reasons it came to be. There’s no majestic movie-script-in-waiting story, no singular moment, just a bitterness built up through the years through a number of factors – football-based, sociopolitical or otherwise. A good old fashioned derby.

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Category: World Football