Colin Randall

The Lads drew 40,000-plus to the Stadium of Light on Saturday. A look down the Premiership attendances shows how impressive that was.

Keane 2 McCarthy 1
Picture: smirkyspice

Salut! Sunderland has a long way to go, but will very soon – today? tomorrow? by the time I finish typing these words? – pass another little milestone. We didn’t get going until mid-January so it’s an encouraging response in such a short time.

To mark the first 5,000 “hits” to this site, and to stop me thinking too hard about the match at Southampton, I today announce the details of a modest competition.

The prizes: a copy of Alice in Sunderland, Bryan Talbot’s fascinating book mentioned in an earlier posting AND a guest column, on any football related topic, on Salut! Sunderland*.

If you get the answer to the question that follows, send it by e-mail _ NOT AS A COMMENT TO BE POSTED HERE – to colinrandall@yahoo.fr or to the address that appears on the e-mail link on this page (top left). I will keep the competition open until Saturday April 14 – let’s make 3pm, kick off time for the QPR game, the deadline for entries.

The winner will be chosen at random from all correct entries received. My decision will have to be final.

To enter, READ ON………..after first taking in the news that Birmingham have lost, Derby could only draw. What an incentive for the Lads at Southampton. Top tonight in they win, and the last two sentences removed if they lose (even though we’d stay second).

Read more

What a brilliant April Fool wheeze.

My friend Rachel Cooke, a bright, funny and award-winning writer on the Observer, drew on her own lifelong support of Sunderland to dream up a seemingly serious review of Alice in Sunderland. This, she said, was a brand new book exploring far-fetched links between the North East, and Wearside in particular, and Lewis Carroll and his great creation, Alice in Wonderland.

I half imagined Rachel pitching the idea at an editorial conference, seeing off a dozen other contenders from around the paper, getting the go-ahead and then composing a bogus critique that would be so good, so persuasive that it would hoodwink readers into believing it was the real thing.

It took me an entire ferry trip from one side of the Channel to the other, once I’d scoured my edition of the Observer in vain for a proper report of Cardiff 0 Sunderland 1, to get the joke. It was April 1 and I’d fallen for what the French call a poisson d’avril.

But no sooner had I decided that this must be a spoof than a text version of “phone a friend” revealed the even more shocking truth: Bryan Talbot’s work was for real, a “graphic novel” according to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, and a “wise and witty” book in the words of the newspaper’s headline writer. How could I have doubted you, Rachel?

READ ON and you’ll see that there’s a free copy of this fascinating sounding book going spare for one lucky reader of Salut! Sunderland.

Read more

In the early evening sunshine two men pulled up, one behind the other, on the quayside at Dover.

From Wembley to the Continent
Picture: janinehealy

Both wore gallows expressions as they stepped from their cars to stretch legs while waiting to board the Calais-bound ferry.

One had taken off his 1937 replica Cup Final top and it lay along the back shelf of his car; the other still had on his gold away shirt, in which colour we had two or three hours earlier lost that momentous playoff final against Charlton.

Read more

Do we all live in a Gary Rowell world?

Loads of Sunderland’s more vocal supporters certainly do, and so does the woman who now holds the No 1 position at Radio 2, a station that is unquestionably a success story at a time when not all things BBC are success stories. And, as you will discover as you read on, she has just been promoted again.

But let’s dwell on football for now. As Wear Down South was able to reveal back in 2003, Gary is one of two heroes in Lesley Douglas’s life.

The other is some bloke called Bruce Springsteen. Meeting him was a doddle. She is far less sure how she’d cope if she suddenly found herself being introduced to Lord Rowell of Seaham. Bruce may have a lot going for him, but he will never score a hat trick against the Mags.

(Heavy brackets time). Salut! Sunderland‘s record of getting answers from the BBC is not great, but we may yet find that she has met and become a firm friend of GR since the interview of so long ago. Watch this space.

Read more

It was a great feeling to be in the automatic promotion spots, short-lived as it proved to be.

Second top for a couple of weeks during the layoff caused by one of those outbreaks of much less interesting football – internationals – would have been rather nice. Birmingham’s late equaliser at West Brom put paid to that.

Realistically, with Brum starting yesterday with two games in hand and level on points, we should be grateful that they dropped two.

Read more

There is no point in pretending that 2-2 at home to Stoke at this stage of the promotion battle was anything other than a bitterly disappointing result.

The message
Picture: Daedalus42

This time, however, we were lucky. Only Preston among our promotion rivals won and we remain third top, just three points behind Birmingham and Derby, teams we have recently played well against.

And the simple fact is that teams by and large do not win all their games. Football would have little purpose if they did.

It’s bad enough that the Premiership big guns more or less believe they have God-given rights to one victory after another. Who could forget the blasé, another-day-at-the-office looks on the faces of Liverpool fans after they beat us in the 1992 FA Cup Final?

Read more