Well, we've made it to the promised land after 25 years.
I was born at Thorpe hospital, Lived in Houghton and the rest of the family in Hetton.
I'm the 1st generation never to have worked down the pit. All my male relatives worked at Eppleton colliery.
My grandad occasionally would take me to Roker Park with my cracket on the minibus from the Three Tuns at Broomhill.
We moved down to Warwickshire when I was a nipper and started to go to Highfield Road with my mates.
So, I have a very keen interest in Sunderland being successful and hope you manage to finish above the Saudi oilers.
It's been said many times that what happened nearly 50 years ago was wrong. This was the actions of 1 man who thought he was acting in the best interest of his club. I would guess anyone in his position at whatever club would have done the same.
Of course we are likely to go straight back down next season, probably as bookies favourites.
Most fans are fully prepared for this and taking the benefit of the parachute payment with us will help in future years.
I have followed CCFC for many years, even seeing us beat Bayern Munich when Mueller, Maier, and Beckenbauer played.
Next year is for the generation of fans never to have seen us play at the top level.
Their football journey has been horrendous. Our shit owners sold Highfield road, couldn't afford the new stadium and had to be bailed out by the council, eventually selling to SISU. They were even worse, tried to buy the ground on the cheap by threatening then upping sticks to Northampton. We went bust and during this time dropped to L2. I took my grandson to his first football game at home to Yoevil - we lost 6-2. That's how far we had fallen.
Mark Robins steadied the ship and him and Ade Viveash (now at Boro) started the upward travel. This wasn't helped by the Council selling the ground to Wasps (without our knowledge) who churned up the pitch and piled on the rent and then kicked us out.
"Home" games went then to BCFC (with a one-off at Burton Albion) where the Covid year prevented us from celebrating as L1 champions.
MR and AV created some great memories at Wembley, even though Wright's big toe prevented us from making the greatest FA comeback against MU.
We finally saw off Wasps who issued a £36m bond to buy the stadium and then couldn't afford to pay it back - great news!
Welcome Doug King. - a local businessman who made a few bob and was a CCFC fan. He bought out SISU and then made the very unpopular decision to sack MR. To be honest since MR fell out with Ade and had him removed, Mark seemed a bit lost without his right hand man. King brought in Lampard with everyone thinking it's another Rooney/Gerrard appointment. Well, from 17th when he arrived to play offs was a fantastic run. No issues from me with you getting to the final.
This season King has bought the stadium, bought/loaned some key positions and despite out winter wobble have topped the league by 11 points.
King is a fan owner, who attends every match. He is not a billionaire and needs to be careful with his money and make sure we live within our means. His comments regarding Sunderland seem to have been taken out of context, not a criticism but just a way of saying that's how they did it but we can't follow that road.
Sorry for this rambling post, but we all know what a football club means to us. To me, there's no "shit", "tinpot" teams, just football clubs loved by their fans.
For Coventry I suspect the journey will be better than the destination, but at least we're there, and you never know - there's always hope.
See you next season.