Most of us know the story of the curate’s egg*. Eager not to offend after being invited to breakfast by the bishop and served a bad egg, he insisted that that it was good in parts. That’s roughly as Pete Sixsmith found the season just ended. Keano and the Lads should perhaps not get too carried away by his benevolent look at the albumen; there’s still the yolk to go……
Many years ago, when the Earth was still young, I was dragged off to either the Essoldo or the Hippodrome in Shildon to see a film called Pollyanna.
I remember being distinctly underwhelmed by this experience seeing as nobody seemed to ride a horse across the plains, asked for a slug of red eye in a dirty glass or shot copious numbers of what were then known as Red Indians.
It appeared to be about a little girl (ugh!) who went round spreading sweetness and light (a little like Amy Winehouse does now) and generally being positive while all around were being gloomy.
So, let’s review the past season through the eyes of a Pollyanna Whittier and look for things to be glad about.
Well, first of all we are still in the Premier League. After the 15 point season, that’s got to be something to feel glad about. We could well be on our way to establishing ourselves as a Premier League fixture like Blackburn, Villa and Middlesbrough.
London has only just voted in its new mayor, and already there is a broken promise. Pete Sixsmith‘s not Boris’s. Having vowed to boycott the capital if it voted for the white-haired one, famously described as “neither as nice nor as stupid as he seems”, Sixer is already making plans for a return to Craven Cottage….
And so another season comes to an end, if not with a bang or a whimper at least with a rousing farewell to this year’s team.
It seems strange going into the final game with nothing resting on it, but I would not have wanted to be like the Blues of Birmingham or Reading knowing that the whole thing was out of their own control. Been there, done that and got several T-shirts.
So, a pleasant end to the season, with both sides giving lads a run out. Arsenal were good. Their movement was exceptional, their pace at times blistering and their strength in depth impressive. It’s not every day you see the captain of Brazil having “a run out”.
Chained to the work station, I still nurtured hopes of keeping one eye on events at the Stadium of Light.
My younger daughter, out here in Abu Dhabi for a holiday, does not agree with my approach to the season’s climax. Despite, shamefully, supporting Liverpool instead of Sunderland and regarding the Lads as only her “second” club, whatever one of those is, she paid little attention to either Spurs v Liverpool or SAFC v Arsenal.
All 10 games were available live at the touch of a remote control button on Showtime channels, but she was glued to the championship and relegation games. “But dad, there was nothing at stake for either Sunderland or Liverpool,” she said later.
One of us is clearly missing the point completely.
Of course I am interested in who wins the title – I loathe Chelsea, so that settles that one – and who goes down (Brum’s fate doesn’t bother me, but I feel a little sad for Reading).
But I would sooner watch any game involving SAFC than any game not involving them. Simple as that. The whole thing is explained in my Club v Country chapter in the ALS book More 24 Hour SAFC People, so no need to repeat it all here (though the link gives you the chapter in full).
Salut! Sunderland naturally considered Nick Hornby, Piers Morgan and similar Arsenal glory seekers when it became clear that the last game of the season should have a second Who Are They? Then we remembered that there are a few real supporters, too. Step forward Richard Stickland* – Stickers to his pals, and that’s him kneeling far left in the front row of a squad of Gooners before the losing FA Cup final against Liverpool in 2001. He fondly remembers Big Niall as “Snakey-boy”, less fondly recalls a Lord Gary Rowell hat-trick at Roker Park and generously, for us, predicts a point apiece on Sunday….
Sunderland to me means long boozy weekends staying with my friends Davey and Julie, who are massive Sunderland fans, at their house in Langley Park.
In fact myself, my brother Roy and our friend Chris have often imposed on their hospitality, for our visits to Newcastle and Middlesbrough as well as for Sunderland matches.
A typical weekend up north would involve driving up on Friday, having a couple of beers and some food before getting a taxi to Durham for an old fashioned pub crawl, which died out in London years ago.
Saturday was usually match day, where we would go to a pub near the Stadium of Light for a couple of liveners before the match. Saturday evening would invariably be spent in the Tap and Spile pub in Framwellgate Moor, for some serious real ale drinking. Sunday morning we would feed our hangovers with huge bacon baps before travelling back down the motorway to London.
One Sunderland game I remember missing. My older brother Jeff announced in 1984 that he was getting married and was trying to sort the date out for the ceremony.
Myself and Roy duly presented him with an Arsenal fixture list with instructions that he must choose a Saturday when Arsenal were away, otherwise he would have two empty seats at the register office.
The date he decided on was March 3 1984 , which coincided with the Sunderland v Arsenal Division One match at Roker Park, which ended in a 2-2 draw. I missed Tony Woodcock’s 40-yard goal that day. I hope my brother appreciated my sacrifice.
Last game of the season, so let’s get arty with the Who Are They? series. Click on the image and you see a scene from the near future, says James Langton*, the first of Salut! Sunderland‘s Arsenal guest columnists. Relaxing in one of the standard “pleb class” suites at the newly relocated Emirates Stadium, a group of typically enthusiastic Gooners enjoy watching their side drop two more home points against Middlesborough. Other Premiership scores scroll below on BBC Sports Arabia……
Would I like to write about Sunderland? Of course. One of the great memories. Dying seconds of the 1979 Cup Final. 2-2. Cross from Graham Rix to the far post… Oh. That Sunderland.
(Puts down prawn sandwich and replaces cup of Earl Grey on saucer.)
I was born in Derby, but left for London at the age of six months. A close call there, then. Moved to North London. Taken to a game by my father at the age of seven or so (he was on the Daily Express when it sold four million copies a day). Sp**s at home. Bored silly. Fell over and cut my knee. Had more fun picking off the scab. So that was it really.
1971. Listening to Spurs – Arsenal on the radiogram. Nothing less than a win or goalless draw to snatch the title for the first time since 1953. Last team to do the double were Spurs. A Ray Kennedy header three minutes from time. First leg of the double. At Spurs. Did I mention that?
Five days later. Wembley Stadium. Charlie George in extra time. Flat on his back as the Liverpool defence slumps in despair. My father was asked by the club to write the official history of the season. Arsenal! Arsenal!
Regular visits to the North Bank in the late 70s and 80s. Can’t recall watching Sunderland (not the one with the perm) although the stats suggest the Black Cats were a bit of a bogey team. Perhaps it was divine punishment for signing Malcolm MacDonald.
It’s a shame this final fixture of the season is so shorn of meaning. Imagine a few results turned round the other way. Points picked up instead of thrown away to Birmingham and home to Middlesborough and Villa for us. Take away those last gasp points for you against West Ham, Middlesborough and Villa. 90 minutes to decide both ends of the Premier League. Wouldn’t like to bet on the result.
Enjoy Pete Sixsmith‘s description of England’s pastoral pleasures. But be warned. The squeamish are NOT recommended to read on and see what he made of the football at the end of this idyllic odyssey in the spring sunshine….
It’s May, there is no pressure on us after last week, the game kicks off at 5.15 and the weather is good. No need to rush to Horwich, just take it easy and enjoy the sights and sounds of England at its best.
Because the coach I usually travel on was booked in for a weekend’s hedonism in Blackpool (at my age, hedonism is an extra bottle of beer a night), I drove down to Bolton.
Which route? A1,M62,M61 or A66,M6, M61? Nah, let’s take a scenic route. Let’s live life in the comfort zone.
Let’s go Richmond, Hawes, Ribblehead, Ingleton, Kirby Lonsdale, Lancaster, Chorley, Horwich. Let’s cross from magnificent Swaledale to beautiful Wensleydale. Let’s admire the wonderful sight of the Ribblehead Viaduct marching across the valley and marvel at its combination of natural beauty and industrial might. Let’s make a little detour into Kirby Lonsdale, visit the beer department at Booth’s supermarket and stock up on bottles of old favourites and new tastes.
Let’s meander around the Trough of Bowland looking for The Fleece at Dolphinholme and if we can’t find it (which I didn’t), let’s not get agitated, let’s stop at Galgate, just south of Lancaster and have a pint of Black Sheep, a decent pub meal and an hour sitting in the sunshine watching Galgate seconds playing someone else from the Westmorland League. Let’s take a stroll along the canal bank and wave at passing cruisers. Let’s have a lovely day.
So let’s forget Saturday’s awful display at Bolton and think back 35 years – 35 years today* to be precise – to a day no one associated with Sunderland Association Football Club can ever forget or, if too young to have been around, pretend to be unaware of……
If the reality of being a Sunderland supporter did not bring so much end-of-season suspense and excitement, some of it for the right reasons, we would probably be less happy to celebrate the 35th anniversary of our last major trophy.
Even the London and Southern England branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association voted to change the name of its newsletter from 5573 after younger members began complaining that 1973 was an awful long time ago, and drew attention to our subsequent under-achievement.
Yet a title recalling such a glorious day in our club’s history as May 5 1973 seemed a perfectly good one to me, and I was among the minority voting to keep it (though I quickly acknowledged that the new name, Wear Down South, was even better). We didn’t just win the FA Cup that day; we earned a place in history for the manner in which we did it, raising our game as an above-average Division two team to overcome mighty, arrogant opponents for whom winning would have seemed like just another day at the office.
Some excellent memories of the day have cropped up in the Celebrity Supporters series of Salut! Sunderland.
Melanie Hill (actress, whose triumphs include Bread, Brassed Off, When Saturday Comes)
Melanie’s best SAFC moment came after the family moved briefly to Kent. Now 5573 is a collection of numbers that might strike a chord with a few supporters. Melanie’s May 5 1973 was spent at home in Gillingham watching Sunderland 1 Leeds Utd 0 on the box as her mother went off to meet Uncle David, who had got her a ticket.
“I can still see her that evening, staggering down the street half-cut in the red PVC coat she’d bought specially for the cup final, and carrying a fake cup and a flag. Goodness knows what the neighbours thought. They wouldn’t have understood, but even now I love to think of it…it’s so brilliant to have a memory like that of your mother.”
Denise Roberston (agony aunt, author)
She remembers sitting up all night knitting scarves for the boys to wear when the FA Cup was brought home in 1973. All that red and white wool? Not quite. The shops had been bled dry of red, and she had to make do with orange. “Terrible stuff,” she admits.
Steve Cram (superb distance runner who set world records for the mile, 1,500 metres and 2,000 metres; also president of SAFCSA London branch)
Steve’s own childhood memories include the 1973 Cup Final and afterwards, when the players took it in turns to visit clubs to show off the trophy.
Wherever they went, they were plied with as much drink as they wanted. Let us just say that when the roadshow reached Hebburn Labour Club, the two players in charge of the cup had such an enjoyable time that the police took it into safe custody over night. Pc Cram was on night shift. When he got home, he roused young Steve and his younger brother Kevin – who sadly died in a fall, aged just 39, while out running very soon after our conversation – whisked them off to the station to be photographed holding the trophy.
“I was about 12,” Steve, pictured on the left, recalled. “It made me realise I’d love to be a top sportsman, even if I wasn’t good enough to do it at football.”
Alan Price (pop, blues and jazz musician who topped the charts with the Animals)
Since leaving the North East, Alan has seen only occasional Sunderland games. He flew back from working in Los Angeles for the 1973 FA Cup Final. To most people, it was a fairytale, but Alan had predicted the outcome. On TV with Jack Charlton, he’d said we would win 1-0 while Jackie insisted that we had no chance.
That night, at the West End victory banquet, Shack and Jackie Milburn danced (with their wives, not each other; Shack would surely not have invited a Mag on to the floor) as Alan sang his heart out for the Lads.
Later, he rang his brother. John, sadly no longer with us, who had watched the game nervously at home. “You know,” he told Alan, “my behind was nipping the buttons off the sofa.” Hands up those WDS readers who practicised their own button-nipping technique as they read that.
At one point, it looked as three-year-old Mia, in this cute YouTube clip, might be Salut! Sunderland‘s best hope of luring a Bolton fan on to the site for the last but one Who Are They? of the season. Then Sluffy popped up and others we’d approached came back, belatedly offering to pour their relegation-threatened hearts out. David Blackburn*, a Bolton supporters’ association committee member, was so keen to do it that we couldn’t bring ourselves to say no. He pleads for a win on Saturday, remembers thinking Bolton should have gone on to beat us at the SoL before we made it 3-1, reveals the identity of Wanderers fans’ new hate team – and demands an answer to the most pressing question of all: what happened to the away fans’ chippie?
Having watched Bolton for many years, you would have thought that I would have got use to all the high and lows of the team.
But this year, God only knows what I have done wrong in a past life!! Watching the team all over Europe has been a pleasure, ranging from being caught up in the trouble in Madrid, to being held in a hotel in a lorry park in Belgrade for 6 hours, with police surrounding it and not letting us go anywhere… at least we were able to watch the game.
We have been abysmal at times this season and at the same time put in some good performances without any luck, ie the game at the Stadium of Light in which I thought we played very well and were unlucky to loose 3-1, some rank bad defending on our part didn’t help!!
Anyway, I digress and will concentrate on the subject at hand now that you have let me have a rant and moan.
We have had many an encounter over the years, not only at Roker Park, Stadium of Light, Burnden Park and the Reebok. Unfortunately I never got the chance to go to Roker, my only memory being watching a game on TV on a snow covered pitch and if my memory serves me right, we won 1-0 thanks to a Jason McAteer header (now that was a few years ago).
I do have a couple of mates at work who are Sunderland fans and they have had great pleasure in letting me know how well they are doing and how crap we have been playing.
A couple of years ago when we drew 0-0 with you in a league game at the Stadium of Light on a Boxing Day on a freezing cold day, my only memory was me at one end of the ground in the away end and them at the other and we were waving across to each other, that’s how bad the game was.
Also, what has happened to the chippie where the away fans coaches park? Always got way too many chips and loads were wasted, but when I went to the ground this season it was closed – I was absolutely gutted!
And now for your questions….
