Keane has instilled a sense of pride

IT seems like ages since our last game so Sunday’s trip to West Ham is most welcome. International football isn’t, as a rule, something that really captures the imagination around Wearside.

Quite why that is I’m not sure; having players ignored by most England managers since the game was invented might have something to do with it. The best case we’ve had of late was Euro 2000 when the country’s leading domestic goalscorer, Kevin Phillips, didn’t even get onto the pitch, despite Kevin Keegan’s side looking unusually toothless up front.

In my time supporting Sunderland we’ve always had more Scottish and Irish internationals than English ones, so the southern media’s insistence that there’s a real rivalry between the home nations simply isn’t true in the North East. We see far more of our own players watching Scotland and Ireland and avoid the patriotic nationalist and sometimes right wing charade that is England.