The Stadium of Light stood deserted and silent at 6 pm on 17 June in Monkwearmouth, north of River Wear in Sunderland, north-east England, even as the Premier League (EPL) resurrected 325 km away in Villa Park, Birmingham – in further struggle for normalcy in a Covid-19 weary world.

England’s EPL on Wednesday joined Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A to unfurl another flag of resurrection through football (soccer) – ironically three protagonists of World War II fighting for the world’s most popular game in the coronavirus world war. It was one more glimmer of hope for a virus-ravaged humanity to return to work, to rebuild, repair life.

The Stadium of Light in Sunderland became part of the pandemic resurrection through the critically acclaimed Netflix series ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ – a powerful documentary narrating life’s struggles through the universal language of sports. The global sports industry means livelihood to millions, or escapist entertainment at worst, but sporting dramas capture the dedication, hard work, courage, human struggles in an ephemeral mundane world.

Sports sagas as in ‘Chariots of Fire’, ‘Seabiscuit’ and ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ give the oxygen of inspiration in dark, breathless days like these, a determination to never let hope die.

‘Sunderland ’til I die’ has become the ‘Invictus’ of our times. ‘Invictus’ – meaning ‘Unconquered’ in Latin – was Nelson Mandela’s favourite poem through his 27 years of imprisonment in Robben Island, Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons: “In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. ….And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. …..I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

‘Invictus’ – that can be a paean of pain of our Covid-19 phase of life – became globally known as the Clint Eastwood-directed 2009 movie by the same name. President Nelson Mandela personally handed the ‘Invictus’ poem to South Africa’s rugby captain Francois Pienaar to inspire him and his underdog team to superhuman efforts in the 1995 World Cup.

The underdog Springboks won the final against New Zealand’s allconquering Blacks Caps at Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg, on 24 June. The against-all-odds Rugby World Cup win helped a joyous South Africa smother post-apartheid anger, helped the simmering racial cauldron of black, white and brown people forge into the Rainbow Nation. William Henley wrote the ‘Invictus’ poem in 1875 and four years later the Sunderland football club was formed in 1879, the year Albert Einstein was born.

The Netflix series ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ across two seasons of 2018 and 2020 gave Sunderland fame across continents. The fly-on-the-wall documentary records the inner workings of Sunderland’s 141-year football club that, legend insists, has the world’s most loyal supporters. A local undertaker said many who died left requests to be buried wearing the Sunderland AFC jersey in their coffin.

‘Sunderland ’til I die’ tells the unscripted story of hope, anger, tears of despair and more hope of the Sunderland Association Football Club after relegation from the English Premier League in 2017. Its struggle to return embodies the pandemic-hit world’s struggle to return to normal life. Sunderland locals normally live the hard life: workers inhabiting a grey cloudy city with short summers and long, cold winters, their daily struggle for a better life amid unfading hope, their hard-earned celebrations at The Wolsey in Millum Terrace, eateries in John Street, Mary Street and across the Wearrmouth Bridge.

For our city to prosper, prays Sunderland priest Marc Lyden-Smith, our football team has to do well. “Everybody in Sunderland has got a relation who’s either worked in the shipyards or worked in the (coal) pits,” Sunderland AFC fan Peter Farrer says in the Netflix series. “Those jobs have gone. Not many people have had it easy in Sunderland. It is a hard place.” Insecurity takes over in hard times.

“We’ve got mortgages to pay. No one knows what will happen if the worst happens and we do get relegated into League One,” says veteran Sunderland club kitman John Cooke. “It’s frightening. I don’t think anyone is safe.” Sunderland and its football club had lived through days of glory. Sunderland was the world’s biggest shipbuilder in the 1940s, its 16 shipping yards building 25 per cent of the world’s ships. Sunderland was so crucial it became a frequent target for Luftwaffe bombers during World War II.

Bombs turned shipping yards into craters and rubble. The locals stayed, fought on, but Sunderland’s best years were gone. Sunderland’s last shipping yard closed in 1988 and the city slid into decline. Three decades years later in 2020, ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ turned the Mackems (as locals call themselves) into global vehicles of hope against repeated failures – the staunch returnto- the-fight mindset the world needs to rebuild after Covid-19 ruins, and win again.

“On the river where they used to build the boats”, begins the haunting ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ theme song from the Lake Poets’ ‘Shipyards’, “by the harbour wall, the place you love the most.” The ship Gillian emerges in the half-light in the introductory footage, stadium seats and Sunderland AFC jerseys in the club’s red and white colours, freight trains cross, shipyard cranes loom like giant skeletons framed against storm clouds; the paved path of Roker Pier across the dark sea to the lighthouse tower’s revolving lamp, a golden glow filling the Stadium of Light.

“Like a ship you built, you’re long gone from the coast Where you are and where we go we’ll never know…” The ‘Lake Poets’ is one-man band Marty Longstaff, a lifelong Sunderland AFC supporter like ‘Sunderland ’til I die’ producers the brothers Gabe and Ben Turner, Leo Pearlman and Ben Winston. They call their production company ‘Fulwell 73’ – ‘Fulwell’, a stand in the earlier Roker Park ground and 1973 being when Sunderland won the Football Association Cup, the city’s last major triumph.

Longstaff said his ‘Shipyards’ song was tribute to his grandfather who would have been 96 years this year. Grandpa Longstaff worked in Sunderland shipyards between the two World Wars. “He stayed there his entire working life,” wrote his grandson, “He was a quiet, hard-working, humble man, kind and dignified, and my hero. Despite coming from nothing and living a hard life, he made the most of it and adored his family above all else, aside from maybe Sunderland AFC.

”For Longstaff, his grandfather typified “the working-class rock”, someone “who held it all together when it all fell apart, who didn’t grumble, who did their best.” This is for and about those people, said Longstaff, “the ones who eschew fanfare, the ones who put others before themselves, ones who give more than they receive”.

Through hard times that come and go, generous brave hearts carry the unconquerable spirit of Invictus, of never stopping right efforts, an epiphany of undying hope – like a struggling people whose rallying cry amid sunshine and rain, joy and pain, stays always “Sunderland ’til I die”.

(The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist)