The botched vasectomy of Sunderland AFC

A couple of years ago a colleague was studiously canvassing the thought processes of other male peers in our office to analyse the estimated opinions regarding the sensitive short-term and long-term effects of vasectomies.

Perhaps he was drumming up courage and he was even courting companionship, another willing participant to join in with him at the surgery. It’s an interesting scenario that unfolds in a room of alpha males when the subject of intense debate is the working functionality of one’s dangly beanbag.

The proposition of this catalogue of cathartic conversations led to a series of dreams over a number of nights, where I would wake up drenched in panicky sweat. Quivering shakes controlled me and my hysterical breathing took a while to steady until I realised the downstairs coconuts were all intact. The dream consisted of me attending a vasectomy clinic only to be greeted with zombie nurses with intense red eyes and blood soaked uniforms. A crazed Doctor with one arm and a Hitler moustache explained my two options. The snip by a pair of rusty, scarlet stained garden sheers or what he described as the ‘clapping method.’ This was a simple procedure of placing ones veg in-between two bricks and…….well I think you can imagine the rest.

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This nightmare has returned of late but has taken another form. Ellis Short appears as the lunatic Doctor with a tyrannical moustache and a one armed outfit stolen from Kim Jon Un’s personal wardrobe. Martin Bain and Margaret Byrne - the toothless, demonic nurses smiling with blood lust and holding aloft serrated garden sheers and bricks as if they’re trophies to be won.

In the end I decided against a vasectomy of my own. I understood the long term effects were not tragic, but things would never quite be the same no matter how I wished they would be or even appeared to be.

And so it is with the current state of our treasured football club. The surgeons who have spearheaded the procedures of our footballing clinic over the last number of years have performed a series of blunderous and botched surgeries that have left an unlimited amount deep scars - many unhealed and a litany of parts that no longer function as enthusiastically as they used to. Some patients have lost heart altogether.

In almost every sense the team at the top, responsible for the welfare and wellbeing of their attendees have murderously and blood-thirstily trimmed, snipped, sliced, diced and in the worst cases chain-sawed their way through nearly every functioning connection that would make the organ of this club and its dangling support network operate in unison and harmony.

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Yes it still kind of works. Sometimes we’re on the upward curve but most of the time we’re brow beaten into limp submission by wastelands of neglect. We are depressed and flattened by a lack of care, a negligible communication effort that seemingly does not exist in any useful format- except to confirm the most vague aspects of its operations that we can all find for ourselves via twitter. We are left swinging in the wind with nothing but rose tinted memories of how things used to be. Remember the naïve excitement of the days of Dr Quinn, Medicine Man? Of Nurse Keane, the carer with a harsh exterior but a caring and tender inside that would show itself in times of need?

Every manager we have spoken to has not taken the challenge, some who would even treble their wages. Martin Bain - a former Chief Executive of Rangers at probably the most unsuccessful era of their entire history - has had four weeks to find a coach who can perform the kind of life changing surgery this team and entire club needs.

He has failed miserably. Yet there are no answers. Ellis Short whose austerity measures have left us unable to perform the kind of operations that would transform lives and bring the feelings of enthusiasm flowing back to where it belongs has failed miserably. Yet there are no answers. They’ve left the lame still limping, the blind still in the dark and the deaf with nothing to hear anyway. Can you imagine attending a surgery as rudderless and hopeless as this? With incompetent and unqualified butchers holding nothing but blunt kitchen knives and second hand Swiss Army Knives in their hands? It would be impossible to feel safe, to feel positive, to feel like your needs, wishes and welfare would be the top priority of these clownish amateurs.

The ties between supporters and club have been twisted, tortured and then cut. Is there a reconstructive surgery available to fix this mess?! I am not optimistic.