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With Ricky Sbragia taking his first game as manager of Sunderland, Pete Sixsmith remembers what it’s like to be the new man in charge, and reflects on the best match he ever saw. Unfortunately, it’s not Everton v. Sunderland.

When I started my first job in teaching in the dim and distant past, what you wanted was a good first day to stamp your personality on the students and the school. What I got was a group of boys who had been told by the government that they could not leave at 15 to go and work at Smart and Browns or Black and Decker, but they had to stay on until they were 16. They were quite happy to show the new teacher that they would not take a blind bit of notice of him; therefore, first day as a real teacher was a bit of a disaster.

I would imagine that Ricky Sbragia would have wanted a good first day as manager of Sunderland. He didn’t get it. Instead of D4 jumping out of windows, he got defenders and mid field players giving away senseless free kicks just outside the area, allowing Mikael Arteta to show just how he relishes playing against us. Last year he twisted Ian Harte inside out; this year he breached our wall twice to wrap the game up by half time.

Everton had no forwards but managed to score three times; we had two forwards who have great reputations and about whom we wax lyrical at times – and we didn’t manage a shot on target until the 70th minute. Says it all doesn’t it!

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Like the sentimental brute who batters his girlfriend black and blue, then slobbers over her with protestations of love? A bit unfair…but Greg O’Keeffe*, who has an Everton website called Gwlad Tidings, was there to watch his boys maul Sunderland last season. And he enjoyed it. But he also has a real soft spot for SAFC – a “proper club” and much more appealing than the Mags to boot. We knew that, of course, but it’s nice to hear someone else say it. He also reckons we’ll get a draw at Goodison tomorrow, and we need one – or better – after dropping points against Blackburn…. For Pete Sixmith’s report on that game Click Here

Irrational hatreds are one of the many enduring things that make football fun.

I can’t stand Aston Villa, for no real reason, and Tranmere Rovers make my skin crawl.
But just as there are some clubs I loathe for reasons I’d struggle to explain, there are those, like Sunderland, I just like.

They are a “proper” football club and I mean that without the patronising cliché tone it could be mistaken for (Everton often get the same verdict from neutrals).

Maybe it’s the long-suffering yet knowledgeable, humorous fans. Maybe it’s the recent Irish link, whatever, I always like to see them do well.

I often meet people who tell me they feel the same way about Everton. Neither club could be described as flashy or arrogant. Sure, you’ve had a few quid to throw about of late but it’s hardly Champions League mega-bucks.

Anyway, I enjoy Sunderland visits to Goodison and as someone who lived for a short time in Gateshead I can fully understand your dislike of the mind-set of Newcastle fans. They definitely have a shared sense of arrogance based on very little substance.

Good luck for the rest of your season. And now the questions…

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As SAFC confirm an 18 month contract for Ricky Sbragia, there’s little rest for Pete Sixsmith who, dismayed by the lack of Christmas Day matches, compensates by taking in two on Boxing Day.

The worst thing about Christmas is that there is rarely any football to be found on Christmas Eve and absolutely none on Christmas Day. I vaguely remember walking up to Headingley in the 1950s with my dad to watch the traditional game with Wakefield Trinity, but I can’t ever remember seeing football on Christmas Day. The last full league programme was on Christmas Day 1957, so since then people like me have had to put up with presents and turkey and brandy and bloody Cliff Richard and just hang on until Boxing Day for the football fix.

I can usually get a couple of games in on the 26th and this year was no exception. The majority of Northern League games are being played on the 27th. But the Billingham derby between Town (the junior club) and Synthonia (named after a particularly smelly chemical) kicked off at 11.00am and resulted in a deserved win for Town. They conceded an equaliser with two minutes to go, but grabbed the winner in injury time – shades of us under Keane last year!

So, having bagged one more game (season’s total 92) I set off up the A19 hopeful that number 93 would see an important home win – although I thought that the new man in charge of Rovers would prove a much harder proposition than the self styled Guv’nor.

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Boxing Day looms. McCallister’s taken another dive (remember that one against us that fooled Graham Barber?), Big Sam’s got Blackburn off to a winning start of his managership and we’re chuffed after scoring four in successive games.
But let’s hear it for Reidy You’re a Star! That’s how he signs on at the Blackburn Rovers Spammers site, but to Salut! Sunderland he is Mick Roberts*, the first Rovers fan to stand up and say who is he ahead of a game against us. We had some great contributions from DodgyGambit and Vinjay ahead of the Carling Cup and Ewood Park clashes in November, but not from anyone wanting to identify himself beyond fan site noms de guerre. That’s fair enough, but Mick is especially welcome to these pages. We also have answers from “StLedge”, which we can fairly assume is NOT his real name, so let us get straight into the questionnaire.

Since our first two games, Keane has gone, Ince has been replaced by Big Sam. And we’re both in trouble. What next?

I think it’s going to be tight around the bottom of the table. Christmas will give a clearer indication of what’s going to happen, especially to the Rovers. If Sam gets us up and running quickly, I think we can get out of it. The same could be said for Sunderland, but you have to get the right man in quickly or I think you could struggle. – Mick

Both clubs have lost the managers they had the last time both our clubs met, and both clubs haven’t faired as well as either set of fans would have wanted for their clubs, as the goals set out by the expectant fans, whether realistic or quietly over ambitious, have certainly changed or at the least been put on hold.
What next?? – Getting away from the bottom of the league is no doubt on the forefront of many fans minds, the next 7 to 10 games will be key in the turn around of the clubs’ season, and after that any league climb will be a welcome bonus. – StLedge

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Pete Sixsmith comes over all poetic as he witnesses an important and impressive win over the Tigers

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the city of Kingston-upon-Hull could be described as paradise, but it was certainly not hell for the happy band of Red and Whites who trundled home along the M62/A1 on Saturday, celebrating a so impressive 4-1 away win.

We won by a similar score in 1976, thanks to the likes of Gary Rowell, Joe Bolton and Jimmy Montgomery. All three are local born legends whose names are uttered in reverential terms whenever Sunderland fans of a certain vintage meet to quaff a few pints. After Saturday, it may well be that 30 years on from now, we will not be thinking local, but thinking French and instead of reminiscing about Joe Bolton’s terriers and Gary Rowell’s impeccable credentials as a Seaham lad, we will be waxing lyrical about Steed’s thunderous shot and Djibril’s pace, power and green Mohican.

Ricky Sbragia (or Spragia as Tyne Tees Useless captioned him last Friday) could not have wished for a better start. This time, he and his co-workers showed exactly what they were capable of by preparing a team to win a game against opposition who were neither monumentally superior to us or so woeful that Shildon Railway would have given them a good game.

Look at the scenario; Hull are on a high after a good draw at Anfield, their manager – a self-confessed Sunderland fanatic – would be desperate to put one over his first and lasting love, they have a full house with kids dressed up as Tigers and men dressed up as Santa, and three more points could put them in a UEFA Cup place at Christmas. And what happens? Sunderland swing into town and give them a real going over.

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Following on from Gary Clark’s excellent piece about supporting Hull City – to read it click here Pete Sixsmith remembers some of the sights and smells of previous matches between the Tigers and the Black Cats

It’s the title of an old Yorkshire folk song that links Hull with Hell, and in it the city on the Humber clearly comes up second best. Hull’s a city that has played quite an important role in my footballing life and, at the risk of upsetting any City fans reading this, I would like to share them with you.

It’s an odd place, a bit like Sunderland in some ways. You never pass though either city to get to anywhere else, unless it’s Rotterdam or South Shields, and both sets of inhabitants can be a little bit chippy. Hull people are fiercely independent, insular to the nth. point and always ready to question whatever decisions are made.

It’s a city built on bloody mindedness. Like Sunderland, it came out for Parliament against the foppery of the Stuart monarchy, it became the centre of the Anti Slave Trade movement of the early 19th Century and it kept on electing John Prescott as one of its MPs. And you don’t get much more bloody minded than that.

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Who’d have thought it? Gary Clark*, found by Salut! Sunderland at the Hull fans’ site City Independent, certainly didn’t and he’s so Hull daft he’s written a book about them and sold his business to be able to follow them throughout their Premier League campaign. But there they are, the Tigers prowling at the top end of the league, refusing to conform to logic, precedent or Brand Supporter disdain. Which makes it all the harder for clubs like ours; we’d sort of seen this season as one in which the promoted clubs would be so weak that we wouldn’t have a care in the world. Brings back memories of Peter Reid’s two seventh top finishes, including the season when we were virtually safe by Christmas. Gary, like last week’s Baggie, totally ignores the normal format of the Who Are They? series so there is, once again, no questionnaire, though our questions are answered in his upbeat piece….

For Hull City FC to be in the top six of the Premier League in December is quite remarkable considering this time last year most Tigers fans would have given their right arms to creep into a play-off place in the Championship.

Not that we’re all pessimists in East Yorkshire, we are just not used to winning anything. City havn’t spent much on brasso over the past 106 years, in fact the only picture I have of a Hull City captain holding up a trophy was Andy Davidson holding up the Sunday Mirror Giant Killers Cup in 1966.

We went trophy mad that year by also cramming the Third Division Title Winners trophy into the otherwise empty trophy cabinet. Since then we have toyed with promotion to and from the old second division and back down to the old third and humiliatingly down to the basement league and nearly out of it altogether.

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Pete Sixsmith looks at a vital win achieved without a manager, and like Black, Jimmy Stewart and the population of Bedford Falls he decides that football is a Wonderful Life – when you are winning!!

Wasn’t it nice to see and hear a Sunderland manager laughing and joking with the ladies and gentlemen of the press on Saturday? After listening to Mick McCarthy’s often tortured and convoluted attempts to get one over on the media, followed by Roy Keane’s ‘Who are you to challenge me on anything?’ attitude, Ricky Sbragia comes across as an easy going, relaxed kinda guy, who is comfortable with his situation and who just loves working with players.

Some of the routines that Roy brought in, which I gather made many of the players see the SoL as Stalag Keaneo, have been dropped. I would imagine that the management at The Ramside are disappointed and that Durham’s taxi drivers are cursing the departure of the Bearded One, but the decision to allow the players to spend the night in their own beds (or that of someone close to them), seems to have had a positive effect.

For many of us, a night away from home is an adventure, a chance to eat and drink the contents of the mini-bar, complain about the shower head, run up and down the corridor in your underpants and scoff a huge breakfast that you don’t really want but you’ve paid for, so you might as well wolf it down. I guess if you are doing it every week it becomes a bit of a drag.

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