Colin Randall

Ha’way the Lasses
Picture: BCLFC photographer Jaskirt Dhaliwal

…..while proper football – except for the great SAFC v Mags scoreline you’ll see if you read on – takes a break.

No, I know it isn’t really a football-free weekend. And yes, I do want England to win (both games). I just don’t want it anything like as badly as I want Sunderland to best West Ham and Fulham and the rest.

I cannot work out why this is, because I have always disliked Leeds, but I want them to beat Orient, too.

It must have something to do with loving great football turnarounds. Ours last season wasn’t a bad example, come to think of it, and who else remembers the glorious failure of that relegation season when, after not scoring for weeks and weeks, we suddenly started walloping everyone in sight for a while? I’ll resolve this love-hate relationship by praying for Leeds to get within sight of automatic promotion only to stumble in the last few games and not quite make the playoffs.

Pete Sixsmith doesn’t care much for internationals either though, thanks to birthplace, his thoughts on Leeds may be a little more complex. But he’ll be at a match today – West Auckland versus someone or other – and you’ll hear all about it one day soon.

Me? Not sure who Abu Dhabi, my destination tomorrow, are playing this weekend but I suspect I’ll arrive too late anyway. But I’ll remember with some pleasure this scoreline………..

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In the first of his new series of articles for Salut! Sunderland – under the working title of Sixer’s Soapbox (let me know if you come up with something better) – Pete Sixsmith draws huge encouragement from a gutsy Sunderland performance, while finding the Emirates well-mannered but soulless

Getting up at 2.45 on a Sunday morning is not, I think, a particularly good idea.

At 12.20pm it seemed to be the worst idea since Mr Punch put his head down the crocodile’s mouth to attempt to retrieve the sausages. I was all for making my way back to the Wetherspoons on Holloway Road.

By 13.10, all thoughts of leaving had gone and rising that early didn’t seem too bad after all. And even though things went downhill at 13.40, the six-hour trip back was tolerable due to the fact that I had seen a Sunderland side compete in the Premiership for the first time since Boxing Day 2002 at Blackburn.

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Not for the first time, Pete Sixsmith’s seven-word summary captures the reality of the game he has just witnessed: in today’s case, a valiant 3-2 defeat at the Emirates.

The measure of how much better we are than the last time we were in the Premiership, or the time before that (for most of two seasons) is that at 2-2, the second half barely begun, Arsenal fans had cause to worry that they might be dropping at least two points.

As Kenwyne Jones ran towards the Sunderland supporters to perform his spectacularly athletic goal celebration (see my picture, sadly after the somersault), how many of the 60,000-odd people present would have been willing to bet very much against an improbable away win?

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Niall Quinn: kind words
Picture: Peadar O’Sullivan

We all whinge from time to time about the club we support and the people who run it.

Sometimes they get things wrong, and those who feel themselves on the wrong end of a spot of pettiness shout loudly enough about it.

But at other times they get things so right that it would be a shame not to say so with as much vigour.

On Tuesday morning, a letter dropped on the doormat of the Scrivens household in Cirencester. It was a sad day – the funeral of Arthur John Scrivens, better know to friends and relations as Rasher, a lifelong supporter of Sunderland AFC – but the letter made it a little more bearable.

The letter was from Niall Quinn who, hearing of Salut! Sunderland‘s mention of Rasher’s passing at the age of 81 in the context of Ian Porterfield’s death, had sent some touching words of condolence to his widow, Nancy.

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My article in A Love Supreme. See here for an introduction to Tommy’s grievance with me:

Plymouth at home last August. Lots of our fans had gone along with Niall Quinn’s desire to make it a day for the Wearing of the Green. By the end of the game, though, we’d lost 3-2 and were bottom. The only happy faces among green-clad spectators belonged to Argyle’s small travelling support.

And on the Metro, one Sunderland fan – an overseas exile like me, back for one game – could hardly contain his fury. “All this f****** Irish sh**e,” he said. “I don’t go along with it. We’re an English club”

Maybe, he was one of the far-right “no surrender” boys. Or maybe it was just the disappointment of defeat talking. But what, I have often wondered since, did he make of the incredible route our season later took as the Irish links became ever stronger?

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Does this mean my street credibility is about to soar?

For being a reporter, I have been jostled by striking miners in south Wales, threatened by nasty little Proddie thugs in east Belfast (and by nasty little Catholic thugs in west Belfast), had guns pointed at me by curfew-enforcing and possibly crack-crazed soldiers in Sierra Leone and advised to make myself scarce at demos in Islamabad and in Serb villages on the Kosovo border.

Oh, and I’ve been stoned by Muslim youths in Vénissieux and once tried in vain to negotiate a “ransom” to repossess the expensive camera nicked from my photographer when she was beaten and robbed by African youths in a dodgy Parisian suburb.

But never until now have I been denounced in print as a “left wing/commie pinko” journalist.

Turn to page 43 of the new edition of A Love Supreme and there it is. I am condemned by “Tommy Coates, Suddicker……exiled in Cardross, Scotland” for an article welcoming the new Irish supporters of – and massive financial support for – the club Tommy and I both love.

But it’s best that I allow my words, and his, to speak for themselves. The next posting here – and it will follow quite quickly – will be the piece I sent to the ALS and which appeared, from memory, in the last edition but one.

If anyone has contact with Tommy, let him know that I will then run – at similar length and subject to changes only on grounds of decency or defamation, which I am happy to negotiate – his response.

In the meantime, as the third article in this mini-series, I will post his ALS letter – in which he expresses his unease at the “Paddification” of Sunderland AFC – in full. You may be our judges.

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Joan Dawson wrote these beautiful words about what she had witnessed at the arena*** where, on Saturday afternoon, I really wanted to be:

A good performance, a great home debut by Kenwyne Jones and an important win. But the day will stick in my mind for the tributes to Ian Porterfield.

The club got it exactly right. The Z-cars theme, the ’73 players coming out with the cup, the commentary from the game, then a great cheer from the crowd followed by prolonged and heartfelt applause.

All the memories and feelings of that time came back. Then, coming up to the 80th minute, the South West corner started chanting Stand up for Ian Porterfield.

As the chant grew the south stand stood up, the corners, the East stand, right around the ground, everyone applauding. I’ve never experienced anything like it at a match.

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