Colin Randall

Salut! Sunderland was edited by Colin Randall up until December 2019 - read more

Sixer’s Gillingham Sevens: a Sunderland romp in Kent

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Monsieur Salut says: for once in my life, I hardly blinked when an opposing side, Gillingham, took an early lead. I just knew we’d bounce back and almost from the re-start, that’s what we did. In what seems to have been a splendid first-half attacking display, Sunderland proceeded to go 3-1 up, Josh Maja adding a fourth in the second half. From Barnes and Benno, I gathered that we rode our luck on occasion but deserved the victory because we took our chances and Gillingham didn’t. ‘Job done,’ they agreed …

Pete Sixsmith was there, enjoying his first visit to Kent for a game involving SAFC, so it’s his seven-word verdict you see below. He’ll find dozens of non-league games to take in before the Wimbledon game on Saturday but this is as good a start as he could have imagined to his travels down south …

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Gillingham Who are You?: the Nyron Nosworthy Appreciation Society

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James Morgan: not a man of Kent, but a Gillingham fan all the same

Monsieur Salut writes: games come thick and fast in League One. We’ve hardly had time to celebrate the emphatic home win against Scunthorpe before the long trip to Gillingham beckons. James Morgan*, our Gills fan, is not from Gillingham and has never lived in Kent. A gloryseeker then? No, he inherited his love of the Gills from his dad and that passes my arbitrary test of true support with flying colours (heaven knows, I was born almost as far from Sunderland as it’s possible to be and still be English). James has pals from uni who follow Sunderland and retains a soft spot for our club – and for a certain player who graced both the Priestfield and the Stadium of Light. I wonder what the Gills equivalent of Roy Keane’s assessment of Nyron – Tony Pulis or Peter Taylor maybe – might have been (Keano said ‘the less time Nyron spends on the ball, the better it is for all concerned’). Oops: forgot to ask him about the Gills sending us down to the third tier in the 1980s …

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The North Eastern Programme Club: (2) class acts for George Honeyman to follow

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Josh on the cover, Sixer inside

Monsieur Salut writes: long ago, Pete Sixsmith and I were the owners of a would-be business empire we called the North Eastern Programme Club. The idea was to augment paper round earnings and pocket money by buying and selling football programmes. It was an abject failure, as the article to which I  link above explains. If we couldn’t trade in programmes, maybe we could end up writing in them. Salut! Sunderland answered a call from SAFC and agreed to provide pieces for the revamped matchday programme. My own first offering, which I shall eventually get round to posting here as item one in a series we shall name after that ill-fated venture, appeared in the programme for the Charlton game. This is Pete’s follow-up, on the subject of football captains. Others may follow …

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Sixer’s Sevens: Scunthorpe United ironed out in the first 45

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I can’t remember the last time I put in a (3)-(0) to signify the half time scoreline when setting up for Pete Sixsmith’s post-game text. From what I read on the all too infrequent comments coming up on the SAFC website that score was well deserved and the final score could have been more. But 3-0 it remained. What happened in the second 45? I suspect more of the same but who knows, other than Pete and 29,000 other lucky souls.

We’ll have to wait for Pete’s match report to see if it really was a game of two halves. For now, here’s his instant seven-word summary:

(Update – now published here.)

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team: Scunthorpe United

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The man himself

John McCormick writes: Scunthorpe itself probably predates the Norman Conquest as the suffix “Thorpe” in a place name indicates a certain level of antiquity. Anglo-Saxon/Old Scandinavian in origin, it typically indicates an area of Danish settlement. Scunthorpe United doesn’t have have quite the same level of antiquity. It was founded in 1899 but it wasn’t until 1950 that it gained entry to the Football League (with a McCormick playing in their first ever FL game), and it took another few years before the club dropped  “and Lindsey” and adopted its present name. In those early years (the 50s, not the Norman Conquest) Pete Sixsmith was just a snip of a lad, and by the time he was old enough to travel to Roker, Scunthorpe and Sunderland were in different divisions.

Even so, he has seen Scunthorpe play. Did you ever doubt it?

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Sixer’s Sheffield Wednesday Seven: out but not disgraced

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Pete Sixsmith was not to be found in the matchday (matchnight?) programme for the League Cup game against the Owls. But he was present for a 2-0 defeat in which there was plenty to admire in Sunderland’s performance. He reckoned we played some really nice football before poor Ozturk’s awful error in the first half allowed Sheff Wed to go ahead against the run of play. The result was sealed with a second Owls goal near the end. Another redeeming feature? Sixer’s first SAFC programme article should be in Sunday’s edition, for the return to League One vs Scunthorpe. This, however, is his first, succinct verdict on tonight’s exit from th EFL/Carabao/League Cup …

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Sunderland vs Scunthorpe United prize Guess the Score: more goals for Maja?

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Jake: ‘you need a long memory’

The congestion of this week and next – with games tonight, Sunday and next Wednesday – means there’ll be an awful lot to fit in over the coming days.

So apologies for Guess the Score for SAFC vs Scunthorpe appearing now. The same applied to the Scunny “Who are You?”. At least there’ll be plenty to read between now and this time next week. We can but hope it will all be positive.

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