In the EFL Championship Playoffs a BITTER cross-sectional rivalry renewed

Why exactly are Sunderland and Coventry rivals?

Coventry v Sunderland in the EFL Championship Playoffs. A two-leg tie that sets the winner up for the richest match in football. Believe it or not, despite the geographic disparity between these two clubs, it us one of the most intense rivalries in England that nobody outside supporters of the two clubs are aware of.

It’s a very big deal to older supporters of both clubs, though to younger supporters, it’s probably just the stuff of lore passed down from the previous generation.

So why exactly is a club from the Midlands intense rivals with a club from the Northeast?

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I will admit I had heard stories about “hating Coventry” during the 1999-2000 Premier League season from Sunderland supporters in a pub, but never really comprehended it’s scope.

This changed January 2006, when I was reading Four Four Two and they had an article about one day in May 1977, when a delayed kick-off of about twenty minutes orchestrated by Coventry’s Chairman Jimmy Hill (due to late arriving fans) permitted a fix, so to speak where the Sky Blues and their opponent Bristol City arranged late-on to get a result that kept both in the top division and sent Sunderland, whose match had kicked off and been completed on time (a loss to Everton), down to the second division. Hill ensured the loud speakers at the ground blared out the score of Everton-Sunderland so both sets of players knew they were both safe with a draw.

It’s something that we believe could never happen today with simultaneous kickoffs and rules about match-fixing. But, it actually could happen again, a topic we will save for another time. In any event the Football League sanctioned Coventry, but the damage was done as Sunderland went down.

Most of the analysis of the rivalry focuses on that day - quite rightly. But the rivalry also has other knock-on impacts from that day. First off, when Sunderland and Coventry are in the same division as they often are, neither has a particularly good record on the others’ home ground, even after both clubs moved to larger, more modern stadiums.

Then their is also the matter of relegation from the Premier League in 1996/97, when Coventry defeating Spurs sent Sunderland down as they lost to Wimbledon. Incredibly, the Coventry-Spurs match kicked off some 15 minutes late that time due to crowd congestion again, though Sunderland much like 20 years earlier lost and that set the stage for Coventry’s escape.

Ironically the year Coventry did finally go down, they had an April win over Sunderland that took them for the moment temporarily out of the relegation zone.

It’s a rivalry both sets of supporters, particularly Sunderland ones still take seriously today, and as noted above younger Black Cats supporters who don’t have personal memories of being “cheated by the game” (as Jonathan Wilson, the great writer who is also Sunderland fan has called the Coventry thing) have been taught all about it.

And now it’s being contested with EVERYTHING on the line.