Year: 2007

Niall Quinn: kind words
Picture: Peadar O’Sullivan

We all whinge from time to time about the club we support and the people who run it.

Sometimes they get things wrong, and those who feel themselves on the wrong end of a spot of pettiness shout loudly enough about it.

But at other times they get things so right that it would be a shame not to say so with as much vigour.

On Tuesday morning, a letter dropped on the doormat of the Scrivens household in Cirencester. It was a sad day – the funeral of Arthur John Scrivens, better know to friends and relations as Rasher, a lifelong supporter of Sunderland AFC – but the letter made it a little more bearable.

The letter was from Niall Quinn who, hearing of Salut! Sunderland‘s mention of Rasher’s passing at the age of 81 in the context of Ian Porterfield’s death, had sent some touching words of condolence to his widow, Nancy.

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My article in A Love Supreme. See here for an introduction to Tommy’s grievance with me:

Plymouth at home last August. Lots of our fans had gone along with Niall Quinn’s desire to make it a day for the Wearing of the Green. By the end of the game, though, we’d lost 3-2 and were bottom. The only happy faces among green-clad spectators belonged to Argyle’s small travelling support.

And on the Metro, one Sunderland fan – an overseas exile like me, back for one game – could hardly contain his fury. “All this f****** Irish sh**e,” he said. “I don’t go along with it. We’re an English club”

Maybe, he was one of the far-right “no surrender” boys. Or maybe it was just the disappointment of defeat talking. But what, I have often wondered since, did he make of the incredible route our season later took as the Irish links became ever stronger?

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Does this mean my street credibility is about to soar?

For being a reporter, I have been jostled by striking miners in south Wales, threatened by nasty little Proddie thugs in east Belfast (and by nasty little Catholic thugs in west Belfast), had guns pointed at me by curfew-enforcing and possibly crack-crazed soldiers in Sierra Leone and advised to make myself scarce at demos in Islamabad and in Serb villages on the Kosovo border.

Oh, and I’ve been stoned by Muslim youths in Vénissieux and once tried in vain to negotiate a “ransom” to repossess the expensive camera nicked from my photographer when she was beaten and robbed by African youths in a dodgy Parisian suburb.

But never until now have I been denounced in print as a “left wing/commie pinko” journalist.

Turn to page 43 of the new edition of A Love Supreme and there it is. I am condemned by “Tommy Coates, Suddicker……exiled in Cardross, Scotland” for an article welcoming the new Irish supporters of – and massive financial support for – the club Tommy and I both love.

But it’s best that I allow my words, and his, to speak for themselves. The next posting here – and it will follow quite quickly – will be the piece I sent to the ALS and which appeared, from memory, in the last edition but one.

If anyone has contact with Tommy, let him know that I will then run – at similar length and subject to changes only on grounds of decency or defamation, which I am happy to negotiate – his response.

In the meantime, as the third article in this mini-series, I will post his ALS letter – in which he expresses his unease at the “Paddification” of Sunderland AFC – in full. You may be our judges.

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Joan Dawson wrote these beautiful words about what she had witnessed at the arena*** where, on Saturday afternoon, I really wanted to be:

A good performance, a great home debut by Kenwyne Jones and an important win. But the day will stick in my mind for the tributes to Ian Porterfield.

The club got it exactly right. The Z-cars theme, the ’73 players coming out with the cup, the commentary from the game, then a great cheer from the crowd followed by prolonged and heartfelt applause.

All the memories and feelings of that time came back. Then, coming up to the 80th minute, the South West corner started chanting Stand up for Ian Porterfield.

As the chant grew the south stand stood up, the corners, the East stand, right around the ground, everyone applauding. I’ve never experienced anything like it at a match.

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After the humiliation of a rugby World Cup defeat against Argentina, last night’s superb win by Scotland at the Parc des Princes in the European Championships deepened the sense of national catastrophe in France, leaving le coq crowing a fair bit less proudly.

A Scot who willed England to victory in anything would be regarded by many of his countrymen as mad or beneath contempt, or both.

Scots could retort that the perfidious English way is to cheer on Scotland, Wales and even the Irish, claiming any unexpected success as one for Britain or, in the case of Ireland and how they hate this, the British Isles.

The Frenchness of the family I married into leads me to support France quite often. I was delighted when they won the 1998 World Cup with that sensational un-deux-trois-zéro tonking of Brazil. Even Zidane’s act of stupidity failed to make me pleased that Italy beat France in the final of the same competition last year.

But last night, as when I watched Ireland at the Stade de France in a World Cup qualifier two years ago, I was rooting for the opposition: on this occasion Scotland. Craig Gordon was one very good reason for doing so, but he was not the only one.

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Out of the blue, an e-mail reached me yesterday from a young person in Gloucestershire called Amy, who wanted to know if there were any songs specific to Sunderland AFC. She’d heard Elvis Presley’s Wise Men Say mentioned; was this something the fans sang?

Yes, I said in reply, assuming it had been the subject of a friendly bet, or even – since Amy works in education – something to do with a school/college project on the culture of football songs and chants.

But no, it was for something more serious. Amy was grateful to have her suggestion confirmed: “I can tell my Grandma now! Its for my Grampy’s funeral next week – he was a big Sunderland fan!”

Come the service, if any of Grampy’s fellow SAFC supporters are present, I imagine thoughts will also turn to Ian Porterfield, a name embedded in the hearts of all red and whites, whether or not they were alive at the time of the 1973 FA Cup Final.

Ian’s death, in a Surrey hospice at the age of 61, was also announced yesterday.

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Here’s a tip for all literate Sunderland fans planning to attend Saturday’s home game against Reading.

Forget or delay your pre-match pint. Don’t even think of joining the ridiculous queues at the official club shop. Still less waste your time at the shop’s little satellite stall between the ticket office and the East Stand turnstiles only to be told they have nothing you wanted to buy, or nothing in the right size.

Pop along instead to Waterstone’s in the Bridges centre where Andy Dawson (pictured), the man behind the new SAFC-related website Haway the Lads will be autographing copies of his new book, The Irish Uprising: How Keano and the Mighty Quinn saved Sunderland. It will, says Andy, be the longest hour of his life, sitting in the shop between 12.30 and 1.30pm “wondering if anyone will come”.

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