Sixer now …as was, albeit a frw years back on a Ferryhill school trip to Paris
Mr Sixsmith – Pete or Sixer to most – has sternly corrected Monsieur Salut. The series is not to be passed off as The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team regardless of context; it’s Ground if we’re playing them away, Team if it’s at the Stadium of Light. So this latest edition is TFTEISYG and emphatically not TFTEISYT. Fine writers, eh? So precious.
But Sixer can be excused all preciousness. This is a wonderful series that cries out for a proper publisher (anyone listening out there?). And once aain he packs history, humour and personal reminiscence to come up with a winner …
John McCormick writes: Pete Sixsmith has finally made it home from seat U2 in the Carrow Road football stadium (hence the reference in the introduction to Saturday’s Sevens). He probably has just enough time to grab some rest before he heads off to Sheffield. But before he gets his head down here he is with the heads up on a game more than a few of us expected to be difficult.
As ever, it’s a fine piece of writing. The bonus is that this time it’s about an excellent Sunderland performance:
Dave Briggs* is a Sheffield Wednesday fan who has seen good times, wretched times and better times. The good times presumably included seven years deejaying in Greece.
Last season’s playoff final defeat was a bitter disappointment but he relished the challenge for promotion after so much underachievement in recent years. Dave thinks we may need to be patient, too, and should not be too downbeat if we cannot make the top six at the first attempt. And he rather likes the three Owls players – Steven Fletcher, Keiren Westwood and Ross Wallace – with SAFC connections …
Photo comes courtesy of our Who are You? Owl Dave Briggs’s Twitter account
Pete Sixsmith had a long trek home from East Anglia yesterday. I bet the fish and chips tasted especially good at Wetherby after a fine 3-1 win. We’ll doubtless hear from him some time day – his report of the match, and his travels leading up to it, is eagerly awaited. In the meantime, start thinking about Wednesday and Wednesday, the third league match of the season …
Matches come thick and fast when you drop to the Championship and we already have three winners of Guess the Score waiting patiently for their prize mugs. Since Paul Devinbe (1-1 vs Derby), Phil Davison (1-0 to Bury and Eric Bowers (3-1 vs Norwich) are regulars on the podium, they’ll know Monsieur Salut can sometimes be slow to get round to having the prizes shipped out.
Don’t let my tardiness put you off telling us how the Lads will get on at Hillsborough after a promising start under Simon Grayson.
As usual, the competition is open to all supporters, Sheffield Wednesday’s, ours and indeed neutrals. Be first to post the correct scoreline before kickoff and you will receive a mug (UK delivery only) with a design reflecting your allegiance.
Pete Sixsmith took his time in getting to Norwich, so we can look forward to an account of his ground-hopping as well as a match report from U2 at Carrow Road, where the seats have no name. (and perhaps Pete will include an explanation of what this means with his report**).
For now, though, we’ll have to make do with the instant, seven word verdict that he sends to M Salut immediately after the final whistle, and doesn’t it make a nice change from what he was sending last season? …
By now you should have caught up with all our post-Bury and pre-Norwich coverage. Go to the home page – https://safc.blog – if not and simply navigate.
Meanwhile, Martin Penney from the Norwich My Football Writer site put some questions our way …
Towards the end of the 2015-2016 season, Sunderland went to Norwich and won 3-0 as part of the Big Sam race for survival. We stayed up, they went down. Before the game, we were able to introduce readers to one of the best Who are You? interviewees of the season, Gary Gowers*. So good were his replies that he took second place in the HAWAY awards – he never received his prize, but we are trying to rectify this now.
As Sunderland’s second Championship game takes us back to Carrow Road, it seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up again with Gary, the editor of http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com. Sit back for another terrific read in which he lays into the arrogance of City’s squad last season and expresses no surprise at our own predicament. He’d quite like Catts in Norwich colours but is distinctly cool on James Vaughan and Lewis Grabban. All the same, he predicts a top six place for Sunderland (and for his own side) …
A banner Jake produced for 2016 game that we won 3-0
We’ve had a first winner in this season’s Guess the Score series and it’s yet another correct prediction from Paul Devine, a Sunderland supporter exiled in the Netherlands. He sensed we would draw 1-1 with Derby County and was right.
As I write, the Bury League Cup game is still to come. There may be another winner to announce from that tie (NB: the obvious update is that I am delighted we got through).
This is turning into a classic series from Pete Sixsmith. Can he possibly keep it up? If he can, there must be a book in this gripping series of reminiscences from a man who has seen more football grounds than Donald Trump has mislaid staff.
In the third instalment of The First Time Ever I Saw your Team, Sixer again mixes football nostalgia, history and travelogue as he prepares for a weekend’s trip to Norwich City with a look back to the first time he visited Carrow Road …
After experiencing one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution in Bury, with its steam railway, its statues of Sir Robert Peel and John Kay (the inventor of the Flying Shuttle rather than the legendary SAFC full back of the late 80s and early 90s) and the home of Richmal Crompton of William fame, we take to the road once again.
This time we are travelling in an easterly direction, ignoring the high Pennines and touching on the low Fens as we trek along the A17/47 super route to what has oft been described as “Britain’s nicest city”, Norwich.
