Sunderland Spartans Season Preview

After making great progress over the last two years Sunderland Spartans are preparing to get their season underway this Sunday, and they fully intend to continue their upward momentum.

The Spartans play in the BUCS North Eastern 2A division alongside Sheffield Sabres, York Centurions and York St John Jaguars. Unfortunately, the Bradford Bears have withdrawn from the season due to ‘budgetary restrictions and being unable to field a team’ as reported on their social media platforms.

Over recent years, the Spartans have been on quite the journey. The first season after COVID came with new struggles for the club who only managed to field a team for one game of the 2022/23 season. The following year Team Sunderland hired head coach Misba Islam with the intention of restoring the team to its former glory when he was a player at the university himself. Last year he ensured the team’s survival, successfully fielding a competitive team for every game.

This year, alongside the committee and the returners, the Spartans underwent an incredibly successful recruitment drive through both freshers and sports fayre this year. The final team of over 35 people competed in two scrimmages with Northumbria Mustangs and Durham Saints, both well established teams in leagues above the Spartans with the latter competing at the highest level of British American Football this year. This recruitment drive has helped the team be recognised as the fastest growing society by the university.

Looking ahead to the season, the Spartans are hoping to establish themselves as contenders in the division and record their first win under their new head coach.

When asked about taking on the role of head coach Islam said: “My connection with this university and this team specifically is a special one. I played for this team as a student, I was the president in my final year and after graduating I was a coach for a number of years under several head coaches before moving on to other roles.

“I’ve even worked for Team Sunderland helping develop this team and other sports teams at the uni. I always had the ambition to lead a team one day but never got that opportunity until now. The team was in quite a bad shape post Covid, lacking numbers and they had just lost their head coach, so it was a big challenge but I couldn’t just sit back and watch the team fall away like many other teams in the league.

“I got incredibly lucky with the coaches I managed to recruit and the players I inherited, they were incredibly dedicated and bought into the vision and goal. Combine that with a good support from Team Sunderland and we’re here now I guess.”

With the 2024/25 season just days away the team’s preparation is in full flow as they look to build on last season’s success.

“This programme was never gonna be an easy task, this was always a 3+ year plan. Last year was year 0ne and the goal was to reset the team, rebuild a positive, hard working culture, build strong foundations, a solid base of players via recruitment and build on that year on year until the team has a large squad that recruits itself and runs itself, so we can focus on competing and achieving,” Islam said.

As well as struggling for players, the Spartans have also struggled to build a coaching team in recent years.

“With my coaches I wanted to build a routine and setup, build their experience and get them fully qualified and confident in their coaching ability. This is year one for me, we’ve got a solid group of returners and recruited a solid number of rookies,” Islam said before adding: “Interest was super high this year and we’ve got some very athletic talented players and I’m excited to see what they can do on the field.”

Islam has also made it clear what he expects from his players in the upcoming season, saying: “My only expectations from my players every year is to commit and compete and the rest will work itself out on the field. So I can’t really say what we’ll achieve in terms of wins and losses, but I’m very optimistic, we’ve already over achieved this year and the season hasn’t even started yet.”

The Spartans open their season at home vs Sheffield Sabres on November 3rd at Druid Park. Kick off is 1:30pm.