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Last game of the season, so let’s get arty with the Who Are They? series. Click on the image and you see a scene from the near future, says James Langton*, the first of Salut! Sunderland‘s Arsenal guest columnists. Relaxing in one of the standard “pleb class” suites at the newly relocated Emirates Stadium, a group of typically enthusiastic Gooners enjoy watching their side drop two more home points against Middlesborough. Other Premiership scores scroll below on BBC Sports Arabia……

Would I like to write about Sunderland? Of course. One of the great memories. Dying seconds of the 1979 Cup Final. 2-2. Cross from Graham Rix to the far post… Oh. That Sunderland.

(Puts down prawn sandwich and replaces cup of Earl Grey on saucer.)

I was born in Derby, but left for London at the age of six months. A close call there, then. Moved to North London. Taken to a game by my father at the age of seven or so (he was on the Daily Express when it sold four million copies a day). Sp**s at home. Bored silly. Fell over and cut my knee. Had more fun picking off the scab. So that was it really.

1971. Listening to Spurs – Arsenal on the radiogram. Nothing less than a win or goalless draw to snatch the title for the first time since 1953. Last team to do the double were Spurs. A Ray Kennedy header three minutes from time. First leg of the double. At Spurs. Did I mention that?

Five days later. Wembley Stadium. Charlie George in extra time. Flat on his back as the Liverpool defence slumps in despair. My father was asked by the club to write the official history of the season. Arsenal! Arsenal!

Regular visits to the North Bank in the late 70s and 80s. Can’t recall watching Sunderland (not the one with the perm) although the stats suggest the Black Cats were a bit of a bogey team. Perhaps it was divine punishment for signing Malcolm MacDonald.

It’s a shame this final fixture of the season is so shorn of meaning. Imagine a few results turned round the other way. Points picked up instead of thrown away to Birmingham and home to Middlesborough and Villa for us. Take away those last gasp points for you against West Ham, Middlesborough and Villa. 90 minutes to decide both ends of the Premier League. Wouldn’t like to bet on the result.

See you next season….and now for your questions:

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Enjoy Pete Sixsmith‘s description of England’s pastoral pleasures. But be warned. The squeamish are NOT recommended to read on and see what he made of the football at the end of this idyllic odyssey in the spring sunshine….

It’s May, there is no pressure on us after last week, the game kicks off at 5.15 and the weather is good. No need to rush to Horwich, just take it easy and enjoy the sights and sounds of England at its best.

Because the coach I usually travel on was booked in for a weekend’s hedonism in Blackpool (at my age, hedonism is an extra bottle of beer a night), I drove down to Bolton.

Which route? A1,M62,M61 or A66,M6, M61? Nah, let’s take a scenic route. Let’s live life in the comfort zone.

Let’s go Richmond, Hawes, Ribblehead, Ingleton, Kirby Lonsdale, Lancaster, Chorley, Horwich. Let’s cross from magnificent Swaledale to beautiful Wensleydale. Let’s admire the wonderful sight of the Ribblehead Viaduct marching across the valley and marvel at its combination of natural beauty and industrial might. Let’s make a little detour into Kirby Lonsdale, visit the beer department at Booth’s supermarket and stock up on bottles of old favourites and new tastes.

Let’s meander around the Trough of Bowland looking for The Fleece at Dolphinholme and if we can’t find it (which I didn’t), let’s not get agitated, let’s stop at Galgate, just south of Lancaster and have a pint of Black Sheep, a decent pub meal and an hour sitting in the sunshine watching Galgate seconds playing someone else from the Westmorland League. Let’s take a stroll along the canal bank and wave at passing cruisers. Let’s have a lovely day.

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So let’s forget Saturday’s awful display at Bolton and think back 35 years – 35 years today* to be precise – to a day no one associated with Sunderland Association Football Club can ever forget or, if too young to have been around, pretend to be unaware of……

If the reality of being a Sunderland supporter did not bring so much end-of-season suspense and excitement, some of it for the right reasons, we would probably be less happy to celebrate the 35th anniversary of our last major trophy.

Even the London and Southern England branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association voted to change the name of its newsletter from 5573 after younger members began complaining that 1973 was an awful long time ago, and drew attention to our subsequent under-achievement.

Yet a title recalling such a glorious day in our club’s history as May 5 1973 seemed a perfectly good one to me, and I was among the minority voting to keep it (though I quickly acknowledged that the new name, Wear Down South, was even better). We didn’t just win the FA Cup that day; we earned a place in history for the manner in which we did it, raising our game as an above-average Division two team to overcome mighty, arrogant opponents for whom winning would have seemed like just another day at the office.

Some excellent memories of the day have cropped up in the Celebrity Supporters series of Salut! Sunderland.

Melanie Hill (actress, whose triumphs include Bread, Brassed Off, When Saturday Comes)

Melanie’s best SAFC moment came after the family moved briefly to Kent. Now 5573 is a collection of numbers that might strike a chord with a few supporters. Melanie’s May 5 1973 was spent at home in Gillingham watching Sunderland 1 Leeds Utd 0 on the box as her mother went off to meet Uncle David, who had got her a ticket.
“I can still see her that evening, staggering down the street half-cut in the red PVC coat she’d bought specially for the cup final, and carrying a fake cup and a flag. Goodness knows what the neighbours thought. They wouldn’t have understood, but even now I love to think of it…it’s so brilliant to have a memory like that of your mother.”

Denise Roberston (agony aunt, author)

She remembers sitting up all night knitting scarves for the boys to wear when the FA Cup was brought home in 1973. All that red and white wool? Not quite. The shops had been bled dry of red, and she had to make do with orange. “Terrible stuff,” she admits.

Steve Cram (superb distance runner who set world records for the mile, 1,500 metres and 2,000 metres; also president of SAFCSA London branch)

Steve’s own childhood memories include the 1973 Cup Final and afterwards, when the players took it in turns to visit clubs to show off the trophy.
Wherever they went, they were plied with as much drink as they wanted. Let us just say that when the roadshow reached Hebburn Labour Club, the two players in charge of the cup had such an enjoyable time that the police took it into safe custody over night.
Pc Cram was on night shift. When he got home, he roused young Steve and his younger brother Kevin – who sadly died in a fall, aged just 39, while out running very soon after our conversation – whisked them off to the station to be photographed holding the trophy.
“I was about 12,” Steve, pictured on the left, recalled. “It made me realise I’d love to be a top sportsman, even if I wasn’t good enough to do it at football.”

Alan Price (pop, blues and jazz musician who topped the charts with the Animals)

Since leaving the North East, Alan has seen only occasional Sunderland games. He flew back from working in Los Angeles for the 1973 FA Cup Final. To most people, it was a fairytale, but Alan had predicted the outcome. On TV with Jack Charlton, he’d said we would win 1-0 while Jackie insisted that we had no chance.

That night, at the West End victory banquet, Shack and Jackie Milburn danced (with their wives, not each other; Shack would surely not have invited a Mag on to the floor) as Alan sang his heart out for the Lads.
Later, he rang his brother. John, sadly no longer with us, who had watched the game nervously at home. “You know,” he told Alan, “my behind was nipping the buttons off the sofa.” Hands up those WDS readers who practicised their own button-nipping technique as they read that.

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At one point, it looked as three-year-old Mia, in this cute YouTube clip, might be Salut! Sunderland‘s best hope of luring a Bolton fan on to the site for the last but one Who Are They? of the season. Then Sluffy popped up and others we’d approached came back, belatedly offering to pour their relegation-threatened hearts out. David Blackburn*, a Bolton supporters’ association committee member, was so keen to do it that we couldn’t bring ourselves to say no. He pleads for a win on Saturday, remembers thinking Bolton should have gone on to beat us at the SoL before we made it 3-1, reveals the identity of Wanderers fans’ new hate team – and demands an answer to the most pressing question of all: what happened to the away fans’ chippie?

Having watched Bolton for many years, you would have thought that I would have got use to all the high and lows of the team.

But this year, God only knows what I have done wrong in a past life!! Watching the team all over Europe has been a pleasure, ranging from being caught up in the trouble in Madrid, to being held in a hotel in a lorry park in Belgrade for 6 hours, with police surrounding it and not letting us go anywhere… at least we were able to watch the game.

We have been abysmal at times this season and at the same time put in some good performances without any luck, ie the game at the Stadium of Light in which I thought we played very well and were unlucky to loose 3-1, some rank bad defending on our part didn’t help!!

Anyway, I digress and will concentrate on the subject at hand now that you have let me have a rant and moan.

We have had many an encounter over the years, not only at Roker Park, Stadium of Light, Burnden Park and the Reebok. Unfortunately I never got the chance to go to Roker, my only memory being watching a game on TV on a snow covered pitch and if my memory serves me right, we won 1-0 thanks to a Jason McAteer header (now that was a few years ago).

I do have a couple of mates at work who are Sunderland fans and they have had great pleasure in letting me know how well they are doing and how crap we have been playing.

A couple of years ago when we drew 0-0 with you in a league game at the Stadium of Light on a Boxing Day on a freezing cold day, my only memory was me at one end of the ground in the away end and them at the other and we were waving across to each other, that’s how bad the game was.

Also, what has happened to the chippie where the away fans coaches park? Always got way too many chips and loads were wasted, but when I went to the ground this season it was closed – I was absolutely gutted!

And now for your questions….

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With only two games left, Bolton seemed a tap-in. Not our prospects of victory, but Salut! Sunderland‘s chances of finding a fan to write the last but one Who Are They? of the season (we have the Arsenal game covered already). Proper club, proper fans….they’d be forming an excited queue, especially after the late dash for safety, for such an opportunity to wax lyrical about their team. No such thing, or rather not at first. Appeals to Bolton fan sites, the supporters’ association, the local newspaper, my former colleague and Wanderers fan Ian Jones all met with deafening silence. So much for that belief that Bolton was a Real Club. Just when I thought we’d have to make do with a piece poking fun at them for their inability to string a few words together, Sluffy popped up, not exactly from nowhere but from one of the sites – Walking Down the Manny Road – where messages had been posted in the hope of luring a wise or witty Bolton fan into our corner of the web. Thank you, Sluffy*. And before I could add “shame on your fellow fans”, a flurry of messages (from Ian, a supporters’ association stalwart and someone at the local paper) suggested we could have them coming out of our ears. We’ve chosen two, so let Sluffy kick off the proceedings….

My first recollection of a Sunderland connection with Bolton was when we signed one of your heroes, Charlie Hurley, way back in 1971/2.

Charlie was at the end of his career when he joined us, so he might have been a legend back at the Roker but he was more a leg end at Burnden.

  Charlie Hurley 
  Picture: krisread

Then two seasons later a young chap with the name of Sam was given his debut; I always rated him more as a clogger than a Bolton legend as a player, but Mr Allardyce turned into the most successful manager for my club in over half a century.

We returned the favour for having one of your legends – a big centre-back at the end of his career by you ending up with BSA (Big Sam Allardyce) – our big centre-back at the end of his.

Big Sam scored a cracker of a goal against you at Christmas time in 1975. A more powerfully headed goal I yet to see. A great game that we won but the crowd that day was amazing, you must have brought 20,000 down that day. I’ve never seen support like that before.

As you can tell from my memories I am an old fart, who moved away from Bolton before the Reebok had ever been dreamt about. Give me traditional the terracing and the craic with opposition fans anyday instead of the sterile stadiums we have these days.

Anyway time and tide waits for no man.

In recent times though, I guess you could say that we have both been a couple of yo-yo clubs, bobbing up from the Championship for a season or so, then bobbing back down again.

The last time I sat through a life Sunderland v Bolton game was from the comfort of a pub a few years back when McCarthy took charge of you for the first time – we did you that day – just like we are going to do you on Saturday. The game is on the box too. Seeing as I live miles away from Notlob these days, its about the only way I get to see the boys play at the Reebok.

A special mention for another Sunderland/Bolton connection would be for a talented player for us and a successful manager for you (at least for a season or two).

If I mention the Monkeys’ song Day Dream Believer and a line starting “Cheer up…..”,0 then I’m sure you will know who I’m referring to (I believe his daughter is a bonny lass too!).

OK, here are some answers to your questions….

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We promised something special from the Boro match, and here it is. Pete Sixsmith was plucked from his East Stand perch and installed in grander environs. There he rubbed shoulders with Sir Bobby Robson, Steve McLaren, Niall Quinn et al, had a privileged seat for a pulsating game, somehow avoided heart failure in the excitement of the finale………and lived to tell this memorable tale

Like Ronnie Corbett in The Frost Report, circa 1966, I know my place. At the Stadium of Light, it is in the East Stand, Row 30, Seat 404 – and a pretty good place it is too. Good company and thoughtful, intelligent neighbours makes the matchday experience a rewarding one, particularly if we win.

However, every so often, I am taken out of my natural habitat and allowed to see how the upper echelons of our beloved club live and work.

For the Boro game, Joan Dawson and I were the guests of John and Irene Hays. John is vice chairman of the club that he has supported all his life, the only local man in the Drumaville Consortium and also the owner of Hays Travel, while Irene is the chief executive of South Tyneside Council and as loyal and dedicated a fan as you would find anywhere.

We were guests in the Boardroom and Directors’ Lounge, the inner sanctum of the club. Excellent food, excellent red wine and a chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Sir Bobby Robson, Steve McClaren, Chris Kamara, various members of the consortium and the man who put it all together, the amazing Niall Quinn.

Sir Bobby attends most home games as a guest of the club and apparently feels more at home at the Stadium than at any other club in the North East. Interesting. He also looked well for a man with his health problems, was very positive about some upcoming treatment and said he was looking forward to watching us storm the Premier League next season or maybe I misheard him on that one.

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  Daryl Murphy 
  Salut! Murphy.. Peadar O’Sullivan

It is been a tough season for anyone needing to watch the high blood pressure. But after fighting like tigers to grab a thoroughly deserved victory against Boro, we are safe at last. The relief and joy yesterday’s result brought to Salut! Sunderland‘s corner of the Arabian desert may well have been felt and heard on Wearside.

So let us salute a team – indeed a squad – that has risen above technical imperfection to play, for the most part, with passion and guts and produce, time after time, victories and draws out of thin air as seconds tick away.

13 Sunderland 36 9 3 6 23 20 2 3 13 13 36 -20 39
14 Wigan 36 8 5 5 21 15 1 5 12 11 34 -17 37
15 Middlesbrough 36 5 5 7 17 22 3 7 9 16 30 -19 36
16 Bolton 36 6 5 7 21 18 2 4 12 12 35 -20 33
17 Reading 36 8 2 8 19 24 1 4 13 18 41 -28 33
18 Birmingham 36 5 8 5 26 22 2 3 13 16 37 -17 32
19 Fulham 36 4 5 9 20 31 2 7 9 15 29 -25 30
20 Derby 35 1 5 11 10 33 0 3 15 7 43 -59 11

Pete Sixsmith’s detailed report is keenly awaited. More accustomed to the common man’s experience of football, he attended yesterday’s game in style. This was his report for today’s Observer newspaper (he also marked the team and his ratings appear as a footnote*):

In the end, it was again the unsung artisans of the team that secured a victory just when it was needed: Danny Higginbotham’s headed equaliser immediately after Boro’s potentially demoralising early lead, Michael Chopra’s cracking goal just before half time and Daryl Murphy’s injury time winner.

We did it without the defensive strength of Jonny Evans and Phil Bardsley … and despite the terrifying presence of Steve Bennett as referee.

Salut! Sunderland has avoided pinning blame for the team’s shortcomings on bad decisions by match officials. But it is not even open to doubt that these have cost us several points this season, and Bennett’s last visit to the Stadium of Light produced the worst of them – the spectacularly wrong denial of Kenwyne Jones’s last second “goal” against Aston Villa.

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Don’t we all remember a time when we simply didn’t care about Middlesbrough? Play Newcastle and the sheer passion of the fans would rub off on our players, instilling in them a do-or-die spirit that would be apparent whatever the result. Boro? Just another little club, geographically close but no real threat and not really worth considering arch-rivals.
So look what happened. Our players play like kittens at St James’ Park, Boro roll over to Bolton and suddenly we desperately need to care about, and beat, the Smogmonsters to make as sure as we can that nothing goes catastrophically wrong at the fag-end of an up-down-down-down-up-down season.
Mick Sheehan* is a close friend. He makes boots. He supports Boro. So here is our friendly Boro Boot Boy’s assessment of a vital game and our two clubs

At the start of the season I was very positive. I thought we had a good chance of qualifying for Europe. I thought Sunderland might struggle, while Newcastle with Sam Allardyce looked like they might go all the way.

By December it all looked a bit grim. However, at least Newcastle and Big Sam were in melt down so there was some Christmas comfort in that.

The last game I saw at the Stadium of Light was 2004/5 (I think) ….. I’d got a lift up to the game with some Sunderland fans…. Gianluca Festa scored with a glancing header in the first half, Jimmy ‘the hitman’ Hasslebank in the second half …. and I had to get a taxi home…… The half time entertainment was provided by Sunderland fans fighting each other in the West stand – definitely a great game. Well it was if you were a Boro fan.

There’s something strange going on with Keano and Southgate. At the start of the season Keano was without question a believer in gonad-crushing as a motivational technique ….. now he’s gone almost Buddhist like …. ethereal …. has he started drinking camomile tea instead of rotweiller’s blood????

Gareth on the other hand was more of a New Age man relying on incense burners, a nylon string guitar and singing Kum by Yah to sort things out at half time ….. now he’s actually criticising referees …. whatever next? Will we see Keano in orange robes levitating during games? or Gareth physically assaulting Rob Styles for which he gets a three month suspended sentence …. increased to four months on appeal?

Sunderland played well in the second half against Newcastle but never really threatened to score – apart from Kenwyne Jones’s header. You’re also missing Evans & Bardsley who have been key players at the back.

I think we’ll win the game on Saturday. We have been playing really well since the Cardiff defeat, which still hurts. However last Saturday against Bolton we were poor, but we have a habit of bouncing back ….

Prediction: two-nil to the Boro …. scorers Alliadiere & Tuncay. Sunderland fans chanting Buddhist mantras at half time and Keano having an “out of body experience”. By the way, does anyone know what he has been smoking? I’d like to try some of it.

And now for your questions………..

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Pete Sixsmith tells it how it is. It is not pretty, but it is heartfelt. And it needed saying

It wasn’t until nine o’clock on Sunday night that I was fully able to articulate my feelings about that afternoon’s disaster. I had kept my head in post match analysis with a friend who has greater things on her mind than a football result, but when I spoke to Peter Horan on the phone all the anger and frustration came out.

He sat and listened patiently while I launched into a series of expletives that would have done Chubby Brown and Richard Nixon proud.

The gist of it was that were useless, spineless and, deservedly, pointless.

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