A good load of QPR fans were able to travel up for the day out and not worry about their finger nails.
1- The Match
Sunderland eventually overcame stubborn resistance from Rangers thanks to a late strike by Grant Leadbitter when for so long it looked like they might be held to a draw. It certainly wasn't the highest quality game of football you're ever likely to see with QPR having their backs to the wall and Sunderland looking terrified of failure for long periods. A walkover looked likely when poor defending from Stewart and Bignot allowed Whitehead in for an easy opener but Martin Rowlands' penalty levelled things and QPR more than held their own when before Christmas we'd have just sunk without trace. Leadbitter's winner came from a free kick foolishly and needlessly conceded on the edge of his own area by Paul Furlong. Probably a fair result in the end but still an annoying one after putting so much effort into the game.
6/10
2- Rangers' Performance
Like I say a couple of months ago going an early goal down in these circumstances would have seen Rangers completely fold. Gregory has instilled some real pride in the shirt in this team though and not only did they fight back and equalise, they then survived the loss of influential defender Danny Cullip to injury before half time. Pat Kanyuka came on to replace him and for ten minutes after half time he was frightening - David Connolly led him a merry dance and how Sunderland didn't add two or three goals to their tally I'll never know. Gregory swiftly swapped Stewart and Kanyuka over so the youngster could have a physical battle with Stern John and the pacier Damion Stewart could handle Connolly. That worked a treat and the game had draw written all over it until substitute Paul Furlong needlessly conceded a free kick in a dangerous position and the ball was rolled to Leadbitter who lashed home. Idiakez came on later and the script seemed to be written for him to smash home a long range free kick but it flew straight at the keeper and Rangers had to settle for a one goal defeat. Still, despite this set back, the boys have come a long way this season and can look forward to Championship football next season with justified optimism and confidence.
7/10
3- Rangers' Support
QPR took a very good support up the Stadium of Light in what is our longest away trip of the season. About a thousand Hooped fans made their way north and backed the side well although it was difficult to be heard around the time of the Sunderland goals with so much noise emanating from the home stands. Nevertheless we certainly drowned them out after Martin Rowlands had equalised, a good chorus of 'we are the Rangers boys' echoed around the ground while the home support sat quietly stunned.
At the end of the game some of the QPR supporters clapped in the direction of the Sunderland fans on their way out of the ground. Whether this was a wonderful, spontaneous act of sportsmanship towards the champions elect or an insurance policy designed to stop Sunderland fans ripping our heads from our shoulders after an hour and a half of chanting "you're not going up" in their direction I'm not sure. Whatever the intention it stopped a number of the home fans dead in their tracks. They'd been goading and gesturing towards us until they saw this but then after a moment of confusion they sort of clapped back and all was very friendly and civil outside with a number of home fans complementing our side and support back at the Metro station.
8/10
4 - The Ground
You know me, I can't stand new grounds - designed and built by people who have never been to a football match and have no idea what football supporters want from a stadium. However the Stadium of Light is the best one around in my opinion so allow me to tick off the usual list of moans first of all and then we'll move onto the positives. The main one is, as ever, parking. Parking for a stadium that can hold 50,000 people is inadequate at the ground and difficult to find elsewhere. You end up parking in town or using a park and ride which after a four or five hour drive up from London is a bloody unnecessary hassle. I know it's trendy and political to talk about a "green travel plan" (copyright Coventry City) these days but you have to face facts - football fans by and large come to football matches in cars.
Other than that though all the usual minus points of these new grounds are absent here. Normally they're miles away from the town or city centre and all the pubs and eateries that goes with that - the Stadium of Light is within easy walking distance of the middle of Sunderland and a good number of pubs. Normally these new grounds are miles away from any form of rail link but the Stadium of Light is within easy walking distance of three metro stations and the Northern Rail station in Sunderland - although there is a slight complaint about the Metro coming in the journey section so brace yourself.
Normally at these new grounds you find yourself separated from the field of play by a chasm of running tracks, advertising hoardings and needlessly large stretches of grass. While it's not exactly a Loftus Road level of proximity to the byline here, it's certainly a damn site better than the ridiculous situation at Coventry and other places.
In most other new grounds atmosphere is difficult to generate and the stands are exactly the same colour and level all the way round. The Stadium of Light has two giant two tiered stands and the atmosphere inside can be deafening when the home side is playing well. This is something for all clubs thinking of moving grounds to aspire to - not the empty soulless bowls at Coventry, Leicester and Middlesbrough. Well done to whoever is responsible for this magnificent stadium.
9/10
5 - Atmosphere
If you'd only stayed for the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of this game you'd have rushed off to phone radio stations and shout from the rooftops - watch out Premiership Sunderland are coming. The noise after the two home goals was deafening, those sitting either side of the away end had total euphoria etched across their faces and the din was incredible. You'd have fancied a pub side to hold their own when roared on by such support.
That's not even half the story though. You see the last time QPR came here in August 2004 there were 15,000 less people in the ground. Vast swathes of open spaces and empty seats greeted our newly promoted side as we snatched a point that should have been all three. Sunderland fans are the worst in the country for pissing off when the going gets tough. Nice Premiership match with Tottenham when the club has already pocketed a seven figure sum in television and hospitality fees before the turnstiles even open and they'll fill that ground no problem at all. A Championship game with QPR when the team need the fans to raise them and the club desperately need a good crowd to cover costs and they're nowhere to be seen. I mean just what have these 15,000 people been doing with their Saturdays while waiting for Sunderland to be good again? What is there to do in Sunderland on a Saturday other than follow the football team?
Now of course all is wonderful in this part of the world at the moment, everything Roy Keane touches turns to gold, and the ground is nearly full and that's fantastic for them. They're talking about season ticket sales approaching 35,000 for next season which again is substantially higher than the total crowd for our last visit here. Let's not beat around the bush any longer here there are some serious, serious glory hunters knocking around the Stadium of Light. A proper 'new shirt' brigade.
The problem with this was shown after QPR's equaliser - everybody fell silent. The rest of the first half was played out in a morgue like atmosphere and at the start of the second half when Sunderland didn't immediately overwhelm QPR sections of the home crowd started to groan, demand substitutions and even boo when their players made mistakes. Just what the Sunderland players needed.
One awesome goal from Grant Leadbitter and they were all on their feet again as if they'd never had any doubts. Keane must make a good start to the Premiership campaign, otherwise prepare for that much used Match of the Day shot of thousands of Sunderland fans leaving before half time because things aren't going their way.
6/10
6- Pre-Match
Back in the day when it was Newcastle on our fixture list, not Sunderland, a massive gang of travelling QPR supporters all used to converge on the bar in the hotel directly opposite Newcastle train station. That bar had a wide selection of cheap drinks and real ale, good food, and a fantastic atmosphere. It was a real find for away supporters and we enjoyed many a session in there before and after games at St James' Park.
Sadly it is now a shadow of its former self. We had to settle down with a hat on the platform of the nearest Metro Station and sing blues numbers until we'd collected enough money to make up the difference between the £20 note I had in my pocket and the cost of the first round for three people. When it came to ordering food the menu was quite staggering - the selection available could be written on the back of a postage stamp in a thick pen and everything was grossly overpriced - ten quid for a burger anybody?
Not even the nostalgia and amusing tales the three of us could recount of the days when twenty or thirty of us used to travel away from home before they died/lost interest could keep us there more than ten minutes. The beer, at that price, should have been sipped and savoured but such was our keenness to shift on to somewhere with a more acceptable pricing policy we downed them basically in one and moved on.
We set off for the O'Neill's next door which had looked acceptable when we'd walked past on the way in but by the time we got there a second time it was heaving to the point where people were spilling out onto the street so we went the other way to a bar on the corner (The Lounge?). This place looked a bit trendy and studenty for the purposes of a match day but there seemed to be a decent cheap menu on offer and Sky Sports, anyway time was pushing on so we gave it a go.
Sadly this place was almost as bad as the hotel bar. The first thing we noticed was a statement on the wall about coverage of the place in the local press, apparently the local paper has stated it is going to be turned into a lap dancing bar. The sooner the better, it's no good as it is.
The place was empty with five bar staff on shift but getting served was an absolute nightmare. Two of them were chatting, two of them were cleaning, and nobody spoke to me for five minutes while I stood at the bar. When eventually they'd got over the inconvenience of having to serve me a surly woman told me that the various menu deals being advertised on the walls around the place were not available because it was Saturday and I was apparently a bit of an idiot for even daring to ask judging by the reaction I got.
Eventually we settled on two burgers and Northern the Younger had an all day breakfast. The food was awful, the breakfast arrived with no bacon and was only completed when bacon was added from our burgers. It was not good at all. The one plus point was it gave Northern the Younger chance to pick some 100/1 nag for the national which managed to come in fourth and win him £52 for a two pound each way stake.
After the game we did what we should have done in the first place - went into the huge Gothic style bar on the station which is very smokey and busy in the main room, but quiet, clean and shows live football in the snug at the back of the bar. We'll be going straight there if we ever have to come again. Speaking to message board regular Hunter at half time he said they'd found a cracking pub not five minutes walk from the station in Newcastle which rubbed it in a little bit but did give us another option for next time.
2/10
7- The Journey
Northern the Elder and Northern the Younger came across to Doncaster on the train from Grimsby and I met them there after travelling from Sheffield. We picked the 1016 train from there to Newcastle as there'd been a fair few familiar Rangers faces on it the last time we travelled up this way but they were sadly lacking this time so we sat quietly at the front and sipped breakfast Stella.
The train was delayed briefly at Darlington when, just seconds after leaving the station, it had to go through an emergency breaking manoeuvre because some chavs were playing chicken on the east coast mainline. When we set off again said chavs were standing by the track making wanker signs at us through the window.
Personally, had I been the driver, I think I'd have done society a favour and accelerated over them, with any luck he could have wiped one of these morons from the face of the earth. Survival of the fittest and all that - these three didn't have a brain cell to share between them. Their parents must be so proud.
There had been rumours of overrunning engineering works on the Metro so we checked that wasn't the case as soon as we arrived and then set off on a wild goose chase of crap pubs for an hour or two. The Metro trip there was uneventful but coming back we again found ourselves in the farcical situation of both Metro stations built to service the football ground being closed because of the danger of overcrowding.
If I had to write a list of ten things to sum up Britain for a foreign visitor this would definitely be on there. We build a stadium for fifty thousand people and provide parking spaces for barely 2000 cars. To combat this we build two tram stations next to the ground, and even call one of the stations the same name as the stadium just to further highlight that it is there to help fans getting to the game. We open this station all day everyday Sunday to Friday but on Saturday, the one day the stadium is being used, we close it because too many people want to use it.
We did make it back on a very crowded Metro train - people just don't understand the concept of full these days, when it's full no amount of you pushing your way in at the door is going to get you on end of story. Things started to become a little painful when we arrived back at Doncaster. Our train was due to leave for the coast at 2040 but this soon started to be pushed back and back and back until we were still sitting there drinking beer on the platform as Match of the Day was starting. When it did eventually arrived a blind West Ham fan (lost at Sheff Utd) and his helper climbed off only to be told they'd missed the last train to London because of the delay and there wasn't a lot GNER could do for them as it was a Northern Rail delay and wasn't their problem. You're blind, it's 10pm on a Saturday, you're in a strange place, incompetence on the railway means you can't get home but hey, it wasn't our incompetence, so bollocks to you.
The helper got so involved in the ensuing argument that he didn't realise the third member of their party was still in the toilet on the Grimsby train so after much banging on the door and shouting "do you want to spend the night in Grimsby you mad bastard" 'Gary' eventually emerged from the bog just in time to wish us all a safe journey and then fall out of the closing doors, flat onto his face on the platform.
We eventually got home, with the drinks supply exhausted to such an extent that Northern the Elder was drinking a vile looking warm whiskey and ginger drink from the trolley, at about midnight. But it was fun.
6/10
8- Police/Stewards
There was very little sign of trouble before, during or after the match despite this being a massive match for Sunderland and the lack of segregation between the home and away fans. The police were hardly seen all day and the stewards were friendly and chatty. They didn't enforce a strict sit where you're told seating policy and they left rangers fans who wanted to stand well alone. Excellent, well done all concerned.
9/10
Total- 53/80