General features

St James' Park will play host to the 128th Tyne-Wear league derby on Sunday 20 April 2008.

Local author Alan Candlish, who wrote Ha'way/howay the Lads: A History of the Rivalry Between Newcastle United and Sunderland, explains the background to the two teams' rivalry.

"The football rivalry goes back to the early 1880s... Wearside was a bigger shipbuilding river than Tyneside at one time, so that was a rivalry in business as well as in sport," says Alan.

Beaten to St James'

Alan's book contains facts from across the years - he even discovered that the Black Cats played at St James' Park before the Magpies:

"Newcastle were formed from a team called Stanley in October 1881. But Sunderland appeared at St James' Park in February 1881 playing a team called Newcastle Rangers, who were the first tenants of St James' Park in the Northumberland and Durham Challenge Cup.

"They got beat five-nil but appeared at St James' Park before Newcastle," Alan says.

Talking numbers

The 2005-2006 season saw Newcastle beat Sunderland both home and away with a convincing aggregate score of 7-3, and the Magpies are ahead of the Black Cats when it comes to overall number of wins too.

When the teams last met at Stadium of Light in November 2007 it finished one goal a-piece - with Milner scoring for the Toon and Higginbotham for the Black Cats.

Find out more about this and previous derbies: