Yesterday I attended the Wear-Tees derby, my first ever away derby which incidentally didn’t go to plan seeing as we, Middlesbrough, lost 3-2.

In truth I don’t get to many away games at all. I attended my first one against Blackburn last season and yesterday was only my second. To be honest I dislike the traveling involved, especially if I end up going on a coach, and it can be too costly after having paid for everything else.

Traveling

Originally I had planned to travel up to Sunderland with my brother and friend, however, after finding out that my brother was in the press box for that game it meant he couldn’t take us as he’d be there much earlier than what we needed to be, plus we’d agreed to follow someone up there. Originally I had been offered a lift by the person who we were meant to be following up, however, I declined, only later to accept the offer seeing as my friend and I had no other way of getting up. He is actually a teacher at my College, in total I had him as a teacher for three years so I know him quite well.

It was a good journey up and luckily seeing as he is a Sunderland fan and has been on many occasions knew an easier way to get to the stadium. If we’d followed the signs for the Stadium of Light we would’ve been considerably later as we’d have to cross the bridge which can get busy. We parked on the south side of the bridge in a car park so it made sense to come in that way.

The journey in total didn’t really take too long seeing as it is only about 30 minutes up the road and there was little traffic on the way there, a tad more on the way back, but that’s because a lane was closed on the road so the traffic was caused by people filtering into the one lane.

Getting to the Stadium

It was extremely strange to be walking to someone else’s stadium. When I went to Blackburn last season I took the coach and we got off the coach and went straight into the stadium. We were dropped off practically right outside the away end.

We walked from the car park to the stadium, which meant going over the bridge and there was just a constant flow of Sunderland fans, which is what I had expected, but it was strange because I am not at all used to walking with the enemy. It was by far a strange experience. I tried not to speak too much seeing asd my accent stands out a lot as the Maccams as they’re also known have a very different accent to the Teesside accent. I don’t talk like a typical Teessider, but I still sound nothing like a Maccam and would stand out like a sore thumb to them.

The game

The game was quite disappointing as we didn’t perform as we should. I didn’t think we’d win but we should have had the right attitude for the whole 90minutes, not just for the first 4 minutes which is when we scored. After Sunderland equalised we seemed to lose interest. Ultimately it finished 3-2 after a last minute goal from Sunderland, which was devastating, especially as we pushed on a bit in the second half.

We went mad when scored the opening goal and then the equaliser, especially the equaliser in fact! We were delirious as we knew if we got anything from that game we would most definitely be safe. If we had won, we would have been guaranteed to stay in the league, however, Sunderland picked up the points and are now definitely safe as they were on the same points tally as us at the beginning of the game.

The crowd

We were very noisy all game long and hardly stopped singing, which was typical of us. I was, however, bitterly disappointed with our fans breaking seats in the stand. Yeah, we lost, but there really is no need whatsoever to go breaking seats. It doesn’t solve the issue in the slightest and is extremely immature.

There was a bit of a problem with the Boro fans and the police as the riot police were pushing some of our fans back, although I couldn’t see what was going on properly… Also after the game we were contained within a police convoy. We were escorted, eventually, to the Boro coaches, however, obviously I wasn’t getting one, I was supposed to be meeting the Sunderland fan who brought my friend and I up. Other fans were escorted round past the buses but I didn’t know where they were going so I went to the back of the coaches as I remember the route to the car park (we passed the coaches on the way to the ground). The road with the coaches on was blocked off by police at the end, eventually we got through and took a lucky stab in the dark as to which way to go and found our ride home.

There was a fair bit of exchanging of words and hand signals when we were contained outside the ground by some of the Sunderland fans and our fans, it would have been easier to have just left it I think, but nevermind, people will do what they want to do…

Not so bad…

It was a decent day out, however, the bit in the middle, the match certainly put the dampeners on it and was desperately disappointing. I was terribly gutted and speechless to say the least. I am now very concerned that we are going to end up getting relegated after Birmingham picked up a point and Fulham won. In honesty I don’t believe that we will pick up any more points this season. We have two games left, Portsmouth and Manchester City, both at the Riverside, yet we seem to play better away from home… I don’t think we’ll get anything from those games. We’ll see, it will be a nerve racking end to the season.

Filed under: Middlesbrough FC, Personal by Aidan