Salut! Sunderland is following normal practice and avoiding premature comment on the signings from Manchester United that seem imminent. For now, we have a minor problem – and you may be able to solve it …
This, with the previously missing third page of the article (shown on the second image) is a corrected repetition of the item already published as No 8 in the series of extracts from the fanzine It’s The Hope I Can’t Stand.
But the cupboard is now bare. I wanted to end the series with two more pieces: the Kevin Ball article that drew a sharp but ultimately friendly response from the man himself and a suitable farewell, assuming one appeared, from the final edition. That is the only ITHICS I have not got, and Nic Wiseman, the co-editor who has supplied me with all these scanned pages to enable you to read some of the best of the fanzine, cannot locate his copy.
If anyone else has it – and we are talking about ITHICS No17 – they’d be doing us a much-appreciated favour if they could scan the Bally piece and any article dealing with the magazine’s closure. Use the email link in the Contact section near the top of the right-hand sidebar or copy colinrandall1@gmail.com … thanks in anticipation.
And here again is my account of Nic’s article – Why Do We Support Sunderland – looking at the international and sometime surprising reach of SAFC;s support base …
Time for another extract from the fund of material to be found in the complete works of It’s The Hope I Can’t Stand, a fine but shortlived Sunderland fanzine from the back end of the 1990s.
Nic Wiseman is the man who came up with the copies for M Salut and then took the trouble to scan and e-mail selected articles.
This is one of his own.
Why do people support the Lads? Well, most of us do so because we have some obvious connection to the city or the broader region that constitutes the SAFC catchment area.
But some people who have no established links with any part of the North East also follow Sunderland: think back to the Celebrity Supporters series and you’ll remember Sir Tim Rice and the Moroccan marathon specialist Khalid Khannouchi.
Back in the 1990s, Nic also put his mind to the question and began thinking about people who had, for whatever reason, ended up supporting Sunderland without coming from anywhere near it.
Click on the image to read the article.
