Colin Randall

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

Websites and parasites: fighting back

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rat trap

No game this weekend – though we should, of course, have been playing Southampton in the FA Cup – so it seems the right time to deal with a spot of necessary admin: how to combat a scourge of the internet age …


Salut! Sunderland, and its sister sites Salut! , Salut! Live and Salut! North, have been infested by an ugly, virulent pest called the website parasite.

The aim of the people posting comments which appear at first glance to be genuine, but can quickly be seen to be bogus and probably generated by computers, is to produce artificially inflated stats for visits to their own, usually unrelated sites or promote Viagra, medicines or whatever else they are trying to flog.

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Soapbox: a sign of the times

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In a more innocent age, people often felt flattered when approached for autographs, to the extent of finding a bit of space on the final page and writing silly rhymes likes “by hook or by crook, I’ll be last in this book”. These days, it seems, it is a chore to be avoided whenever possible. Salut! Sunderland can see that footballers may regard autograph hunters are annoying, trainspotterish oiks. But Pete Sixsmith argues that it doesn’t actually take a long time out of their lives to oblige young admirers

As if things were not bad enough …

A dismal mid season could well herald yet another relegation scrap. There is animated discussion amongst the fans about whether Bruce should go to the library with the pearl handled revolvers and do the decent thing. It appears the camp is split between the underachievers brought in by Keane and those attracted to the club by Bruce. And now……..

We have players who are non-signers.

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West Ham’s pay cut saga: the way forward for us too?

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David Sullivan’s warning that everyone at West Ham, the club he now co-owns, faced a 25 per cent pay cut did no harm to the players’ mood, the Hammers dismissing Birmingham City with a minimum of fuss to put more pressure on us at the bottom of the Premier. As our own aversion to winning gathers strength, we wonder whether there might be a lesson in this for Niall Quinn and Ellis Short …


Two stories about Sunderland and full backs tell us a lot about the nature of football.

Mickey Gray was a decent if unspectacular SAFC player, admired both for being a local lad made good and for the exciting partnership he forged down the left flank with Allan “Magic” Johnston. He is remembered less admiringly for his woeful penalty miss in the Charlton play-off final in 1998, and for a restaurant altercation with Wayne Rooney.

As everyone who supports Sunderland probably knows, he also won a star prize for insensitivity when, on the day several members of the SAFC staff were laid off because of the team’s failures on the field, he arrived for training in his gleaming new Ferrari.

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Portsmouth 1 Sunderland 1: sorry Niall, sorry Steve

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Another game against lowly opposition, another failure to show ourselves to be in a different class. Colin Randall endures last-ditch heartbreak – and a missed golden opportunity to win for a change – at Fratton Park

Sorry Niall, sorry Steve: if only you had taken the players on a pre-match inspection of the away end at Portsmouth last night: primitive toilets and catering, narrow steps and a shockingly congested exit path at the top of the stand …

It might have stopped them putting in another ultimately inadequate performance of the kind that threatens to lead us back to the Championship – where such conditions are the norm.

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A tricky visit to Fratton Park, but time to deliver

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An 11-hour flight from Beijing gave Colin Randall plenty of time to ponder gloomily on Sunderland’s present predicament …


Niall Quinn has reason to remember Nov 20 1997. It was, if my memory is correct, the last time Sunderland managed to win at Portsmouth and his was the first of four goals in a superb 4-1 victory.

Thirteen years on, Niall has asked fans to show patience and support despite – or perhaps because of – the present appalling run of defeats and draws. And he cannot be faulted for doing so: booing the team as they leave the field after a rotten display is one thing, getting on players’ back from the first misplaced pass is another (especially in our case, given how many misplaced passes we have come to expect).

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Who are you? We’re Portsmouth (again!)

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So. I go away for 12 days and six home points turn into two, Sunderland are back in yet another relegation scrap and we’re left wondering where the next win is coming from. Fratton Park? We’d love to think so. Dave Byne*, from the myPompey fans’ site, thinks we’ll have to settle for a draw, but fears his own club is going down …

Salut! Sunderland The cup game left Sunderland fans fuming. You must have taken heart for the rest of the Premier season – as in, there’s worse than Pompey!

Certainly on the pitch it has to be encouraging when you beat a Sunderland side that have clearly built on last season and have generally had a solid campaign so far. And yes, I believe that there are at least three worse teams than Pompey in the Premier League but we are now operating with a very threadbare squad and the chances of keeping them altogether feels doubtful. Good result for us though BUT we need to get some victories in the league.

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Soapbox: the day St Ives proved a bigger lure than Wigan

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In which Pete Sixsmith, who rarely misses a Sunderland match, explains his worrying truancy. It’s all to do with the attraction of the FA Vase and a need to get himself, and his blood pressure, away from the Stadium of Light …

A win and a draw. That’s how it went for me on Saturday and it is a combination of results I would have been delighted to take had it been a win for Sunderland and a draw for Shildon.

Alas, it was the other way round, as the Railwaymen triumphed 3-1 at St Ives, while the Black Cats could manage no better than a 1-1 draw with relegation rivals Wigan Athletic.

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SAFC 1 Wigan 1: glass half full?

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soapbox

With Pete Sixsmith once again missing the action  (and the chance to appear on MOTD2), Malcolm Dawson takes the positives from our match against Wigan.

The journey to the Stadium of Light from my base in the Midlands had a familiar air about it. I have lost count of the number of times fellow exiles and myself have made the trip with the feeling that here was another crucial game. Three points essential.

There have been seasons when we have been pushing for promotion and even two when we harboured hopes of European qualification, but more often it has been the threat of relegation that has been the dark cloud tracking our progress north, emphasising the importance of the win.

Yesterday was no exception. Fortunately, I had missed Monday’s game. I hadn’t been impressed when I watched our game at the Britannia and had no desire to find a pub with ESPN. Reading Sixer’s summing up I was happy to have made the right choice.

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Wigan or Wembley? A genuine dilemma

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After Stoke,we welcome another footballing giant in Wigan Athletic. Pete Sixsmith may well give that one a miss for a ride on a potential Wembley bandwagon..

The ground at St Ives. Picture courtesy of St Ives Town FC
The ground at St Ives. Picture courtesy of St Ives Town FC

 

After the display we were  forced to sit through on Monday night, only the most devoted followers of the Marquis de Sade can be looking forward to the visit of the Wigan pie eaters with any enthusiasm or expectation.

Wigan had an even worse result than we did, losing at home to serial bankrupts Notts County in an FA Cup replay, which prised 4,000 Latics out of their armchairs and into the DW stadium to watch open-mouthed as their team were dumped on.

That should reduce the Wigan following from the tiny to the miniscule, and should lead to a huge number of empty seats in the South Stand. Add to that the fact that there may well be an empty seat in the East Stand (Row 34, Seat 404) as I am caught on the horns of a footballing dilemma.

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