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There’s a lot winning going on: our friends at A Love Supreme have just collected their second successive award for football fanzine of the year, Sunderland “won” the right to stay in the Premier and here – at last – are Salut! Sunderland’s winners in the great Who Are They? awards …

Forget George Orwell, tracing the progress of the same breadcrumb each day on the breakfast table at his lodgings. The Road To Wigan Pier is a marvellous book, but Salut! Sunderland has discovered that the town provides shelter and inspiration for another writer of distinction.

Step forward Bernard Ramsdale, “landlord” of Ye Olde Tree and Crown, the Wigan Athletic fan site and clear winner in our awards for the best contributions to this site by opposing fans during the 2008-09 season.

Bernard, picture below, wins a copy of the customised Wigan Athletic book, kindly donated by Getting Personal. If the excellent Sunderland version of the book is any guide, he will be content with his prize.

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Salut! Sunderland was asked, but two thirds of it was going to the match and Setanta couldn’t stump up the fare to get the other third from the south of France to London.
When the offer was relayed to members of the Blackcats list, Stephen Worthy* leapt at the chance and spent Sunday afternoon in the studio with fans of other relegation-haunted teams, including a certain Newcastle United.
Here is a blow-by-blow account from Stephen – aka Griff, a rock, motoring and former SAFC fanzine (It’s The Hope I Can’t Stand) writer – of a special way of seeing us to safety, Toon safely doon and a Mag safely home …

I’ve made some bad decisions in my time. Like the time I turned down a girl at school for a date; she went on to become a top international model.

But when the Salut! Sunderland editor put out an e-mail last week asking if someone wanted to become the Sunderland representative on a Setanta Sports News fans’ panel for the last weekend of the Premiership season, it sounded like a good gig. At first.

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A lot has happened since Jeremy Robson, a long way from his native Murton, took this clinical retrospective look at a season that, at the time his thoughts were flowing, still held ample scope for disaster for Sunderland AFC and its passionate followers. A day that had not quite begun in his Canadian exile was to end happily. But Jeremy – that’s his lad, Dave, aged seven, a future SAFC keeper, after a tournament at the Riverside (a Championship ground near Hartlepool) – sees no reason to change his analysis of where the club found itself at 4pm on Sunday. There is sharp criticism of Roy Keane, harsh questikons about our rightly revered chairman’s role in the way the season developed – and evidence of a surprisingly intimate knowledge of the work of Barry Manilow …

Judgement day, as I write, has already arrived in Sunderland.

Here in Elora, Ontario it’s 13 minutes away, so still tomorrow. One more day left at least as a Premier League side. I must confess to stalling on writing this.Salut! Sunderland asked me to do it weeks ago, and pestered me all week to remind me that I hadn’t.

I’ve been stalling, not because there’s nothing to say. The problem is that there’s too much to say, so bugger it here we go.

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Some of us remember only too well the feeling at the end of another wasted school term/year. It was time for the report.

Well, it’s certainly time for Sunderland’s.

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We were just about to call a halt to the festivities and get on to some serious reflection on the mess that has been our season, and how we should now proceed. Then, a quick look at the geordies.net website revealed, to the left of a list of perfectly sensible headlines above stories of interest to Mags contemplating a downsized lifestyle, a typically mindless slice of abuse aimed by one of its readers at Sunderland AFC. So Pete Sixsmith gets special dispensation to offer a guide to the 10 things we should not do for fear of causing further upset to our grieving neighbours …

DO NOT ON ANY ACCOUNT

Go the top floor of Fenwicks, get in the lift to descend and every time it stops at a floor, shout “Going down”.

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We’ve had great fun over the past few days, keeping an eye on – and making our own contributions to – what has been said about our survival and Newcastle United’s relegation.

There will be more fun (and that, above, is Adamfearman’s YouTube reminder of Sunday’s potent mixture of relief and joy) plus, today or tomorrow, the announcement of Salut! Sunderland‘s winners in the Who Are They? awards, in which the previews supplied to us throughout last season by opposing fans have been assessed by a panel of three.

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First things first: it was not Pete Sixsmith that we captured from TV coverage of the end-of-match celebrations, but Gerry McGregor, a stalwart of the Blackcats list. Look at the pictures below and decide whether we were justified in being misled for a short time. Now on to the business: an emotional day provided perfect inspiration for Pete’s eloquence …

In my years on this planet, 58 and a bit, there have been a few highlights: Leeds winning the Rugby League Challenge Cup in 1957, us at Wembley ’73 and Michael Portillo’s face in 1997. To that sparse total add May 24 2009 and a home defeat by Chelsea.

I don’t think I have ever celebrated a defeat as much as I did this one. At the infamous game at Notts County in 1994, we slunk out ashamed that a late goal had relegated Brentford rather than us. Sunday was completely different.

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