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At this stage of the season points are more important than performances, and no-one knows this better than Pete Sixsmith who, having narrowly avoided a heart attack while watching the match, goes on to enjoy a few pints of Deuchars and the impending demise of N**c***** Utd.

One of our better ones, I feel, at least results-wise. Nearly every result we could have wished for went our way.

First of all, we had to make sure that we pushed Hull City further down the slippery slope to the Great Grimpen Mire of the Championship. And we did it. I know it wasn’t the greatest of performances, but we won, had a little stroke of good fortune re. the goal and came away fairly certain that The Tigers will be sharpening their claws at Blackpool, Preston and Newcastle (dare to dream) next season.

It was a spectacularly awful game with both sides nervous and edgy. Hull came out with the express intention of breaking the game up and making sure that we did not control the midfield. Fortunately, Tainio and Leadbitter were not bullied out of the game by Boateng and Marney. Mike Dean’s reluctance to book any of their players until he was forced into it didn’t help and I still can’t fathom out how he could keep Mendy on the field after he kicked Richardson. Mike Dean, International Man of Mystery.

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With thanks again to Hull City’s Gary Clark, we conclude this week’s marathon look ahead to the game on Saturday, one that is vital to both clubs.On the big question – Sunderland or Hull to win – he wavers between a narrow victory for City and a draw…

City played Newcastle at the height of the protests against Kevin Keegan’s latest departure and I was stopping over in the Toon at the time.

So I read all the local newspapers and watched the local telly about the forthcoming protests and their chances against Hull.

The best result the fans interviewed gave us was a 4-0 defeat.

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Yet more on Hull from Gary Clark. Here, the Tigers’ prolific scribe discusses his candidates for relegation, wonders how Stoke can get away with playing on an under-10s size pitch and questions Alan Shearer’s appointment…

I do not think Phil Brown has been linked to the Sunderland manager’s osition since we dropped out of the top half of the table.

He hasn’t appeared on Question of Sport since either. Or been linked to the England job. In fact if we do go down this season he will have a battle on to keep the job he has.

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Gary Clark continues his entertaining look at Hull’s Premier season ahead of our vital clash this weekend…

The Premier League experience has been beyond my wildest dreams and at times and like a kick in the bollocks cruel at others.

To watch my team play on an equal footing at places like Old Trafford, Anfield, The Emirates and Stamford Bridge has been a dream come true.

It’s what keeps football at grass roots level going and I do seriously believe Hull City FC have been the football story of the decade, a modern day Wimbledon.

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Gary Clark, author of the above book and of the fine preview of Hull v SAFC in December, has returned. As if to shame the hard-of-thinking fellow Tigers at the City Independent site who promised to preview the most important game of each club’s season, but may have been joking (without realising the joke was unfunny), he has again come up trumps on Sunderland v Hull. But he is also determined to do it in stages. Can we stand the sequence? You judge…

Phil Brown has divided this season up into little mini league segments, like a Chocolate Orange, we stuffed our faces at the start of it, now we are scrambling around for the bits, and feeling a bit sick.

With six games to go Hull City need perhaps six points to guarantee safety, a point a game, sounds easy doesnt it? It perhaps would be if three of those games were not against Liverpool and Manchester United at home and Aston Villa away. We also have Bolton away and of course yourselves. I have seen Hull win at Aston Villa in a league games, only just a tad over 40 years ago but I have never seen us win at Bolton. Our other remaining home game is against Stoke City, so you do not have to be Albert Einstein to work out the games Brown will have targeted for those extra points. Er, it’s you – Sunderland – and Stoke!

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A result that was expected – but, in the end, disappointing because of all we’d contributed to the game. Even Man United fans know they got out of jail. Pete Sixsmith – here, as at The Observer – looks at the silver lining…

After three anodyne performances where the prospects of visits to Preston, Blackpool etc grew stronger by the minute, we needed a visit from the self styled “greatest club in the world” like Gordon Brown needed a suspect blogger.

Rooney, Ronaldo, Scholes, Tevez and the new Italian wonder kid all pitching up against a defence who can’t mark at corners, a midfield that runs around in circles and a couple of forwards who have as much in common as Perry Como has with Eminem. Disaster beckoned.

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In prolific form (and on holiday, which explains it), Pete Sixsmith slots in an afternoon visit to the cinema to see the new film about one of our heroes…

One of the best ways to spend an afternoon when on holiday from work is to go to the pictures. There is a wonderfully decadent feel about slinking into a cinema on an afternoon when the rest of the world is out there making a living and I’m just making up time for my pension.

Last half term, I went to see The Reader, which I didn’t much care for. In fact, if I never saw Kate Winslet’s breast ever again, I would be a happy man, having had an eye full of then in this movie. I sneaked into a Silver Session for over 60s for this one and it was rather disconcerting to hear the male part of the audience rustling in their trouser pockets for a spare Wurther’s every time the well endowed Ms Winslet disrobed.

This time, I visited an out of town complex to see The Damned United. I read the book when it first came out and thoroughly enjoyed it and I was interested to see how an American director would deal with a quintessentially English story of two working class men (Clough and Revie) in the same job but with such different views on how it should be done.

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Desperate for an antidote to the blues inflicted by our wretched performance at Upton Park, Pete Sixsmith joined Quakers fans at Darlington v Wycombe Wanderers. He saw the sort of writing on the wall that threatens not only Darlo but Southampton and Charlton, and raises nervous questions about the fate of Sunderland, if relegated…

Forgive me for using this again, but there is a classic line in Fawlty Towers where O’Reilly, the useless Irish builder, tells Basil: “Cheer up, there’s always someone worse off than you.” To which Fawlty replies: “Is there? Well, I’d like to meet him, I could do with a good laugh.”

Life is grim for us Sunderland fans at the moment. The pronouncements coming from the Stadium and Ricky Sbragia’s office in particular, are as optimistic and upbeat as a missive from Eeyore the Donkey on how to be more miserable than ever before. But if it’s bad for us, it’s even worse for Darlington fans.

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