Colin Randall

Perhaps safest to say nothing to Roy Keane’s face, but could it be that our esteemed leader is among the growing band of devoted readers of Pete Sixsmith’s Soapbox? Or was it just great minds thinking alike?

Well, I got the team selection right. And more important, so did Roy. He said that we have to make the Stadium of Light a “Snarling Place” and he picked a side that was able to do this.

We got into Birmingham’s face right from the start, and we stayed there. They were never allowed to settle and the two centre halves were roughed by Kenwyne in the first half and then by Kenwyne and our latest Swedish recruit in the second. Prica replaced Yorke, allowing Whitehead to move into the middle and Deano and Miller dominated the centre of midfield.

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The only thing in the world that truly matters tonight is that Sunderland duly got the three points needed from the game against Birmingham. Two nil, might have been three.

But that wonderfully vast world of SAFC support ought to be aware that among the fans who witnessed this crucial victory was one Charlotte Ord. All of eight years old, she was making her first visit to the Stadium of Light. I hope she will never forget that she saw her team win.

I needed to be thousands of miles away to know of Charlotte’s SoL debut. My day had started with a slightly despairing search for somewhere in Abu Dhabi where the match would be screened. The late kickoff had me worried.

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Pete Sixsmith set his sights admirably high in demanding nine points from the three home games starting with Portsmouth. Then he accepted that a tally of seven might be more realistic. But with Pompey out of the way, we now face a pair of relegation rivals at the SoL and our uselessness on the road forces him back to his original view

A few weeks ago I wrote that the home games against Portsmouth, Birmingham and Wigan were absolutely vital.

As we approach the middle one of the trio we have three points under our belts. But such is our miserable away form that we cannot afford to drop anything at the Stadium of Light against opponents in our section of the four-part FA Barclays Premier League.

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Let’s not just hear it for the lads, and lasses, of the Billingham branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association. Let’s dig into our pockets to support their charity walk: a 32-mile overnight trek to the Stadium of Light for a forthcoming home match* (and if God is watching, He’ll make sure to give us three points in honour of the gesture).

It happens every year – the sponsored walk, not necessarily the points – as the pictures suggest. This year three charities, instead of the usual two, will benefit.

The proceeds from sponsorship will be split equally between Zoe’s Place, apparently one of only two Baby Hospices in the whole of the country, and Daisy Chain.
Infants from birth to five years with life limiting or terminal illnesses, and special and complex needs, are cared for by Zoe’s Place. All the services are free to the families that use them and there is no fixed catchment area.

And the Daisy Chain Project, based at Calf Fallow Farm, Norton, aims is to build an overnight respite and family care centre for children with autism and special needs.

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John Baker lives in Idaho, writes like an American and thinks we’re Geordies. But he’s a Birmingham City fan through and through, has this website to prove it and responded in a blue flash to an invitation to write for Salut! Sunderland. So what does John make of SAFC? He quite likes us but thinks that with thinner, horizontal stripes – ideally, from his viewpoint, not until after Tuesday’s game at the Stadium of Light – we’d start playing better

Sunderland to me is one of those likeable clubs – likeable as long as you don’t get beaten by them all the time. By that I mean that us “normal” footy fans get tired of getting beaten by the Man Us, Chelseas, and Arsenals, but Sunderland, like Birmingham, well hey, there are points there for the taking ain’t there?

Of course, in Sunderland’s case it depends whether you hit them on a black or white season. I mean, all this yo-yo stuff between divisions makes my head spin!

OK, so this may be a “black” season, but after Tuesday’s game, I really hope you folk up t’cold north can turn things around and get to know the Premiership a bit. That goes for our blue boys too.

By the way, with regard to your “white” time last season, just count yourself lucky that we didn’t have a proper tactician at the helm, otherwise you’d have been runners up! This doesn’t mean that I’m prejudiced against you Geordie lot*, but the one we just got rid of would look the part leaning against the bar in the Rovers Return. No way is he a proper football manager! OK, OK, so his Newcastle affiliation makes him the enemy to you lot too. Good. Now we can move on to more serious things.

I mean, listen, what the hell are you folk doing in vertical stripes for Jimminy’s sake? Everyone knows that you can run faster in horizontal stripes, so at least have some kit designer design some “thin” stripes to lighten the load. No wonder you’re as unsuccessful as us Brummies! This is 2008 y’know, and it’s time streamline.

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Exiled in Abu Dhabi, Rob McKenzie misses his beloved ice hockey. But watching the suffering of a Sunderland-daft colleague who can catch every kick live on TV offers a sharp reminder of sporting under-achievement back home

Fans of Sunderland AFC and the Toronto Maple Leafs are twins separated at birth, cheering through thin and thinner for teams whose glories are tinted sepia. The Leafs last captured the Stanley Cup in 1967. Sunderland supporters chortle still over a match from 1908.

If by some fluke these kindred spirits were to meet, the crux of their conversation might go:

“Oh, so you’re a loser. Whaddaya know, I’m a loser too …………….”

At time of writing, the Maple Leafs are 19-8-22 in league play this season, Sunderland 5-5-13. The Leafs are coasting to a third consecutive year of missing the playoffs, an impressive feat given that 16 of the National Hockey League’s 30 teams qualify. Sunderland are romancing relegation, more exclusive territory as only three in 20 may attain it.

Perhaps the Leafs would be better off if they possessed Sunderland’s more miserable record. Their mediocrity undermines their future, because it is the NHL’s truly abysmal teams that get first crack at young talent in the annual player turnover. So they’re bad enough to be bad, but not bad enough to get better.

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Thousands of miles from home, SAFC expats can gawp at every step of the Lads’ up-down-down Premiership progress while ticketless fans at home make do with radio commentary and TV highlights. Pete Sixsmith fears the differences do not end with football viewing rights

Ah, the advantages of working in a country which has no restrictive rules on the games you can watch on television. There might not be one-man one-vote democracy either, but you can at least watch the Lads without having to travel to north London and spend hours on a coach.

Colin’s report echoes what I heard on BBC Radio N******** and saw on MOTD. Careless defending + slack finishing = a long drawn out relegation battle. Such a disappointment after last week’s rousing performance against Portsmouth, but typical of the way we have gone about this season.

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Where our defence gets panto practice?
Picture: dsch

One moment of pathetic defending at the start, another at the end and glaring misses as we got agonisingly close to an equaliser. Business back to normal after our latest one-win-in-a-row sequence.

McShane’s naive and clumsy attempt at a clearance after less than two minutes, aided and abetted by colleagues unable to get the ball upfield or up into the stand, gave Spurs a dream start. When Murphy was presented with as good an opportunity in similar circumstances, his feeble response must have left most Sunderland fans resigned to the likelihood that this, yet again, would not be our away day.

Yet we went on to have further chances as we dominated the second half. Chopra’s spectacular miss – ball, not target – would have been comical had he still been playing for Newcastle, while Miller and Whitehead and probably others also missed when scoring would have been easier, in one or two cases even for me.

Pressing forward as relentlessly – and necessarily – as we did, we were inevitably vulnerable to breakaways. But Robbie Keane can scarcely have believed his luck. It wasn’t even a breakaway but a routine goalkeeper’s punt from his area to ours.

Nosworthy and Evans somehow missed the bounce and let him slip through, and a £9 million keeper marred a fine match with goalkeeping more in the £100,000 region. The ball was hit hard but straight; it still managed to squeeze beneath Craig Gordon’s diving body and Keane had his 100th Spurs goal to script.

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Fame was clearly the spur, and the words have come in bucketloads from White Hart Lane. With reassuring brevity, Greg Meyer* rounds off Salut! Sunderland’s own silly season – and Salut! thanks ’em all

Surely Keane vs Keane is not a relegation dogfight

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