Crack open the champagne: Sunderland have started the season with a win.

Last weekend’s 2-0 victory in the curtain-raiser at Cardiff City was not exactly a thing of beauty. It was a performance better described as ‘competent’ than ‘complete’ and far tougher tests lie ahead over the course of the Championship campaign.

But a win is a win and even a midweek Carabao Cup pratfall at Preston with entirely different personnel barely took the shine off things, although an early exit is always disappointing no matter how it is spun.

Back to that win at Cardiff, though, which deserves to be celebrated for its rarity value alone.

Because in recent years, Sunderland just don’t do winning starts (at least not outside the third tier, and I think we can all agree that a cloak of collective amnesia should be thrown over the League One wilderness years).

When I say ‘in recent years’, I mean that when competing in the upper echelons they have managed to win their first league game just a handful of times in a quarter of a century.

Prior to the trip to South Wales, you’d have to go back to Bolton away in 2009, and before that the home win against Spurs in 2007.

And then in 2001 at home to Ipswich Town, and in 2000 at home to Arsenal when summer arrival Stanislav Varga’s stunning debut eclipsed even Niall Quinn’s winning goal against his former club.

I’m looking back as far as 1999 when I began covering Sunderland, but even then the club’s sluggish starts were already a thing - they managed just one opening day win throughout the 1990s and, unsurprisingly, that kicked-off the record-breaking 1998-99 105-point season.

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Anyway, Sunderland’s latest head coach Regis Le Bris has succeeded where so many of his predecessors have failed, and good for him.

He needed to get off to a good start and he has done just that.

Few will hold the Preston defeat against him considering that it came in the lowest-priority cup competition and with a second-string starting XI - in fact with just over a fortnight remaining until the transfer window closes, it could even be seen as providing a timely reminder to the powers-that-be that the squad lacks depth in key areas.

Now it is on to this weekend’s first home game against Sheffield Wednesday and, if opening day wins are scarce, then Sunderland starting a season with back-to-back league victories is as rare as the proverbial hens’ teeth.

Sure, they managed it in 2021-22 but that is covered by the League One amnesia exemption.

Instead, hop into the time machine and transport yourself back to the summer of 1980.

Petrol is 28p per litre. A packet of 20 cigarettes 14p. A pint of beer 47p.

ABBA’s Winner Takes It All is number one in the charts, Dallas fans were still waiting with bated breath to discover who shot J.R., while the North East was enjoying a transport revolution as the Tyne and Wear Metro ran for the first time.

In football, Ron Greenwood’s England had qualified for the European Championships for the first time since 1968 but having made it to the finals in Italy they crashed out at the group stage, domestically the top flight meant the First Division and it was the last hurrah  for two-points-for-a-win, while Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest were looking to lift the European Cup for a third successive season.

Summer signing Sam Allardyce made his debut as Ken Knighton’s newly-promoted Sunderland beat Everton 3-1 at Roker Park on the opening day in the First Division, and four days later John Hawley hit a hat-trick as the Wearsiders thrashed Manchester City 4-0 at Maine Road (it was a very different age in more ways than one).

That was the last time Sunderland started a season in either of the top two tiers with back-to-back wins.

Here’s hoping that wait comes to an end on Sunday.