Year: 2007

Kenwyne in the wrong R&W stripes
Picture: Darren Sumner

Salut! Sunderland is in turmoil. After all I said at the Blackcats forum about us being desperately unlucky at West Ham, Pete Sixsmith weighs in with a completely different view

Disappointed…yes. Frustrated…definitely. Unlucky? Absolutely not.

Looking like a Premiership side at times. But heading back to the Championship, possibly, if we continue to waste opportunities like this.

Make no mistake, West Ham were there to be beaten. They were low on confidence, their fans are muted after last seasons shenanigans and they have resorted to signing ex-Mags who, as they always do, came back to haunt us.

I am loath to criticise Roy in case he comes to my house and stares at me in an even more intimidating way than Yosser Hughes. I don’t envisage Roy ever having to say “Gissa a job” but I do think he got his tactics and selection wrong on Sunday. There I’ve said it.

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If this picture* – no prizes for guessing when it was taken – captured our only moment of joy at West Ham, there would be no reason NOT to despair.

Losing 3-1 to a very average team at this stage of the season, with so few points chalked up, would normally inspire deep misgivings about the months to come.

But we know, and this is a view that must be shared by all neutrals in the watching world, that the game ought to have ended with not one but three points to Sunderland. If West Ham continue to enjoy the sort of luck they had on Sunday, they can look forward to qualifying for European competition.

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Michael Chopra – overdue a goal
Picture: Peadar O’Sullivan

Maybe it’s just that I’ve seen us play them so often. But games against West Ham always bring a stream of memories to mind.

One match at Upton Park that I didn’t see, I am relieved to say, was the one that finished West Ham 8 Sunderland 0, Geoff Hurst scoring six. If you are 39 today, you are just two days short of sharing your birthdate with the occasion of that slightly uneven contest. Correct me on that if you have historical records showing we were a shade unlucky.

At least they don’t make ’em like that any more, do they?

Just looked at Hammers Mad, an unofficial site, and totted up the predictions streaming in from their supporters.

You don’t expect massive objectivity on partisan sites – Salut! Sunderland apart, of course – but before we get to the noble, dissenting voice of HappyHammers4Eva, let me tell you that on a quiet day off in Abu Dhabi, I counted 16 Hammers plumping for 2-0, 15 for 2-1, 11 for 3-1, nine for 1-0, four for 3-0, three for 4-1 and one for 3-2. No, they aren’t away wins.

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You cannot spend all your free time in the glitzy shopping malls. There’s football to watch, too. But how often in my Abu Dhabi exile will I have to watch Luton v Northampton?

It may just be my bad luck, but every time I surf the TV stations in my hotel, or pop into a bar showing sports channels, I end up watching that game. I mean, there may have been five goals but PLEASE no more Hatters and Cobblers, whether the commentary comes in Arabic or English.

Needless to say, I have been ignoring England’s latest sporting setback and exploring the options for catching our game at Upton Park live on Sunday. Sunday is a working day in the Emirates but the three-hour time difference means I should be away in time to see it live.

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World Cup glory, Durham style

So what do you do on a blank Saturday? Pete Sixsmith reminisced about boyhood and “real Rugby”, then soaked up the spirit of the FA Cup.

Another week off for international games and another week without the fix of an SAFC game.

Some of us (me and Colin) are old enough to remember the days when you had to have at least three players involved in internationals before you could apply to the FA for a postponement.

If Martin Harvey, John Parke and Johnny Crossan were playing for Northern Ireland we got a Saturday off. On the other hand, if none of those was selected, but Neil Martin was picked for Scotland we had to play. The opposition had probably lost at least one as well so you got a decent game.

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Ha’way the Lasses
Picture: BCLFC photographer Jaskirt Dhaliwal

…..while proper football – except for the great SAFC v Mags scoreline you’ll see if you read on – takes a break.

No, I know it isn’t really a football-free weekend. And yes, I do want England to win (both games). I just don’t want it anything like as badly as I want Sunderland to best West Ham and Fulham and the rest.

I cannot work out why this is, because I have always disliked Leeds, but I want them to beat Orient, too.

It must have something to do with loving great football turnarounds. Ours last season wasn’t a bad example, come to think of it, and who else remembers the glorious failure of that relegation season when, after not scoring for weeks and weeks, we suddenly started walloping everyone in sight for a while? I’ll resolve this love-hate relationship by praying for Leeds to get within sight of automatic promotion only to stumble in the last few games and not quite make the playoffs.

Pete Sixsmith doesn’t care much for internationals either though, thanks to birthplace, his thoughts on Leeds may be a little more complex. But he’ll be at a match today – West Auckland versus someone or other – and you’ll hear all about it one day soon.

Me? Not sure who Abu Dhabi, my destination tomorrow, are playing this weekend but I suspect I’ll arrive too late anyway. But I’ll remember with some pleasure this scoreline………..

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In the first of his new series of articles for Salut! Sunderland – under the working title of Sixer’s Soapbox (let me know if you come up with something better) – Pete Sixsmith draws huge encouragement from a gutsy Sunderland performance, while finding the Emirates well-mannered but soulless

Getting up at 2.45 on a Sunday morning is not, I think, a particularly good idea.

At 12.20pm it seemed to be the worst idea since Mr Punch put his head down the crocodile’s mouth to attempt to retrieve the sausages. I was all for making my way back to the Wetherspoons on Holloway Road.

By 13.10, all thoughts of leaving had gone and rising that early didn’t seem too bad after all. And even though things went downhill at 13.40, the six-hour trip back was tolerable due to the fact that I had seen a Sunderland side compete in the Premiership for the first time since Boxing Day 2002 at Blackburn.

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Not for the first time, Pete Sixsmith’s seven-word summary captures the reality of the game he has just witnessed: in today’s case, a valiant 3-2 defeat at the Emirates.

The measure of how much better we are than the last time we were in the Premiership, or the time before that (for most of two seasons) is that at 2-2, the second half barely begun, Arsenal fans had cause to worry that they might be dropping at least two points.

As Kenwyne Jones ran towards the Sunderland supporters to perform his spectacularly athletic goal celebration (see my picture, sadly after the somersault), how many of the 60,000-odd people present would have been willing to bet very much against an improbable away win?

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