Football isn’t only a game between 22 players on a pitch – it’s also about the game of international power on this planet. Not to mention the love of a Sunderland-born author for his home club and city. Spark’s Ciaran Myers discovered this when he met Guardian journalist Jonathan Wilson. It’s perhaps not often that […]

Oxford University Press has named ‘rage bait’ as its 2025 Word of the Year – but what does Sunderland think? Hannah Rooney went to find out.   This year’s Oxford Word of the Year – ‘rage bait’ – describes a tactic where internet users purposefully inspire anger in others, to drive their profile on social […]

Two societies at the University of Sunderland came together yesterday (December 10) to host a fundraising event for Gaza and Sudan.   Friends of Medecins Sans Frontieres Sunderland (FoMSF) and the Sunderland Plastic, Aesthetic and Reconstructive Surgery Society (SPARSoc) organised the fundraiser, which took place yesterday afternoon at City Space, on UoS’s City Campus. The event […]

Snowed In Sunlun is back, and this time it’s bigger than ever. Snowed In is a festive-themed charity gig, run by Sunderland University’s Northern Academy of Music Education (NAME) students. This year, they are expanding the initiative and putting on two shows, one at Pop Recs, Sunderland, on December 10th and the other at Vixen […]

When is a local football club more than a local football club? When it’s a lifeline – and life support – for the children and young people who live around it. Ciaran Myers discovers one such club on Tyneside.   Newcastle Benfield is a Northern League football club in the heart of Walkergate, Newcastle – […]