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Paul Hardyman once kicked Newcastle goalkeeper John Burridge in the head after missing a penalty in a Wear-Tyne derby and was sent off.
But it is two stories he tells about policemen that better capture the hostility of the fixture.
‘I signed for Sunderland in 1989 from Portsmouth,’ the former left back begins. ‘We were on the coach to my first away derby and Gordon Armstrong (Newcastle born) asked what was the biggest I’d played in. I told him Portsmouth v Southampton. He said, “That’s nothing compared to this, this is horrific. You’ll be spat at taking throw-ins and they’ll be on you”.
‘I was trying to tell him it was just as bad on the south coast when we pulled up at some traffic lights near St James’. There were three policemen at the side of the bus. One of them saw it was us and stuck up two fingers! Gordon was like, “Told you, didn’t I?”’
If that incident made Hardyman laugh, he was not so amused later in the season. He had missed his 90th-minute penalty in the first leg of the Second Division play-off semi-final at Roker Park — a goalless draw — and was suspended for the return.
‘I was in the stands with Colin Pascoe and Tim Carter. When Eric Gates scored early, we jumped up. We wore these horrendous Hummel shell-suits — yellow and turquoise. We stood out like a sore thumb. We got pelters.
‘I thought, “We can’t watch this here”. As we were scurrying down the steps, a Newcastle fan booted me up the backside! I turned around and a policeman was nearby. I said, “Did you see that?” He just turned and looked away! I thought, “I’m in trouble here”. I got to the players’ lounge as quickly as I could.’
There he watched Sunderland’s 2-0 victory as home fans invaded the pitch following Marco Gabbiadini’s 85th-minute clincher. The game was nearly abandoned amid ugly scenes and a toxic atmosphere, the worst in recent memory.
Even Newcastle’s players were scared and not spared. Defender Bjorn Kristensen remembers: ‘We all ran in the dugout. When we got back on, we all played on one side, right next to the tunnel! When I left the ground, my Alfa Romeo was in pieces. It was inscribed with, “Driven by Bjorn Kristensen”. Bit of a giveaway, yeah? But it was the Newcastle fans who gave it a kicking!’
Hardyman lived in Durham, a mix of Sunderland and Newcastle fans, and he also had issues with a sponsored car.
‘Newcastle fans tried to run me off the road a couple of times. They jumped all over my garden one night and ripped up the trees and plants. They later set fire to my “for sale” sign — I thought they’d be happy I was going! So yes, it could be fierce.
‘I didn’t live far from John Burridge, either. I later read he wanted to come round and brick my windows! That would have been an interesting confrontation.’
The penalty incident remains one of the most infamous in derby history. Hardyman, now a successful coach with the Orange County Soccer Club in California, recalls: ‘I’ve watched that game back and there was no football, just tackles and scuffles. Micky Quinn poked me in the eye, and he was my mate from Portsmouth!
‘I then had the chance to win it. I’d scored pens all season but didn’t hit it as well as usual. Still well enough for Burridge to spill it, though. I thought, “There’s only one thing I can do here, put him and the ball in the back of the net!”. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out… I mistook his head for the ball!’
Hardyman might well have pints thrown at him on Tyneside, but he’ll never have to buy one as long as he lives on Wearside. That is the line between love and hate.
The rivalry of savagery
There is one principal reason for a rivalry that has, on occasion, descended into savagery. Distance. Thirteen miles and a Big River, as Jimmy Nail called it, separate the stadiums. Close enough to detest, but not close enough to respect. It is the perfect divide for bitter, inbred division, a generational inheritance of dislike and mistrust.
London rivalries are intense on a matchday but dissipate amid the blurred borders of the metropolis. On Merseyside and in Manchester, there are no borders. Even in Glasgow, they live and work among each other.
In the North East, there aren’t so much borders as battle lines, and they are ground into the turf of everyday life. It is not unusual for a Mackem or Geordie working in the rival city to be known simply as, ’The Mackem’ or ‘The Geordie’ in the workplace. Accent and club allegiance trump religion and political persuasion when it comes to personal identity up here.
Only in small pockets of the region, halfway down that 13-mile stretch of road, does a crossover exist and fraternisation, occasionally, triumph. In the Black Bull pub in East Boldon, Newcastle and Sunderland shirts hang side by side behind the bar this week.
‘We’re raffling them ahead of the game, just as a bit of fun,’ says the manager, Ian. ‘It’s rare in that we’ve got a split of punters in the pub. But because the shirts come as a pair, there’s been a fair bit of banter. They’re saying they’ll use the other shirt as toilet paper or set it on fire!
‘The irony is, our pub — where there is a mix of fans — is the least likely to have any trouble. We’ll be showing the game and they’ll sit in their own groups of black and white and red and white, but they all know each other, there’s a community feel. It’s my first derby here and I wondered about using door staff, but I’ve been told we won’t need any.’
It is just as uncommon to find families with split loyalties. Paul Usher, 49, helps run the Newcastle branch of the Sunderland Supporters’ Association. He is one of 130 members living in enemy territory. Why? He married a Geordie girl.
‘Some of the lads raised an eyebrow as to why I was getting involved with a Newcastle fan when we started going out,’ he says. His wife, Shirley, adds: ‘More than 20 years on and we’re still together… but I was ready to divorce him the day Paolo Di Canio did that knee slide!’
That was in 2013 when the Italian boss celebrated a 3-0 win at St James’.
‘We were watching at home and, at 3-0, I’d had enough,’ she says. ‘I took our two girls out to let everything simmer down. I came back and, in the excitement, Paul had had a few drinks. He’d started cooking tea and the kitchen was a mess, pans boiling over.
‘I said to him, “What on earth?”. He replied, “Argh, you’re just angry because your team got beat!”. I was more bothered about the house burning down.
‘But we’re respectful of each other’s allegiances. I’d call it a tolerance, really. Everyone has their quirks and foibles — Paul’s is that he supports Sunderland!’
It is not just at home where he finds such misgivings.
‘I’m in the minority at work,’ he says. ‘I was stuck in the car in the snow outside one day and a few of the lads came to help dig me out. One of them, a Newcastle fan, saw it was me and went back in! He said he wasn’t helping a Mackem!
‘I find that sort of thing sad. I go to lots of away games and I’d happily mix and get on with all opposition fans. It would be nice to think we could do that with Newcastle, but we just can’t, it’ll never happen.’
Paul is taking their youngest daughter, 15, to her first derby today, and the couple have warned her it could become ‘vicious and heated’.
Such as in the wake of Di Canio’s gloating, when Newcastle fans clashed with police and one of them, Barry Rogerson, then 45, punched a police horse called Bud in the face. He was jailed for 12 months and 50 more fans were charged with disorder offences in scenes that shamed the city.
In 2002, a pre-arranged fight near the North Shields Ferry terminal between the clubs’ hooligan fringes saw 30 people jailed in what was described in court as some of the worst football-related violence the UK had ever seen.
Any why? Yes, some will argue the rivalry dates back to the English Civil War — when Newcastle and Sunderland took different sides — or they will point to the perceived economic inferiority of Sunderland and their fight for equality. Or even shipbuilding and the old Sunderland adage of, ‘We used to mackem, you used to tackem (We used to make them, you used to take them)’.
But, in reality, it comes back to distance — too far away to ever love, but close enough to always hate.
Olivia Martin is a dedicated sports journalist based in the UK. With a passion for various athletic disciplines, she covers everything from major league championships to local sports events, delivering up-to-the-minute updates and in-depth analysis.
