Pete Sixsmith didn’t quite take the day off but the trip he made was a short one, only over the border to the next county.
It was Bob Chapman who crossed the border into another country.
Meanwhile, Sunderland appear to have only one place to go.
Here’s Bob’s report.
Olivia Hutchison has done nothing to deserve the pain inflicted on her by Sunderland AFC when she goes with her dad, Rob, to games, mostly away since they live in the south. Last year, you’ll recall, she even jumped out of a plane to raise funds for the Bradley Lowery fund. Yet today she was obliged to watch in horror as SAFC produced a classic second-half surrender. ‘This might be a long journey back,’ said the text. ‘As bad as it gets? Certainly since Southampton.’ Her words? His words? Jointly composed? What followed were Rob’s one-word ratings .. not for the squeamish!
John McCormick writes: I didn’t think Cardiff City were anything special yet they brushed us aside. So what does that make us?
Bob Chapman, standing in for Pete Sixsmith sent us his immediate post-match text and in just seven words, gives us something of an answer. An answer we didn’t want:
John McCormick writes: after 1971-2 it was another 30 years before I returned to Cardiff. This time I drove there and stayed in decent hotels (you know, the kind with heating and showers). Cardiff had changed from the solemn, somnolent city I remembered. Now it was full of partygoers engaging in drunkenness and sin.
But it wasn’t all improvement. There were yuppies, and Ninian Park, despite refurbishment, was showing its age.
It took another few years for City to get their new venue, as Pete Sixsmith relates in part two of Cardiff’s “first time ever I saw your ground…”
John McCormick writes: I made it down to Cardiff in 1971 or 2, via the Heads of the Valleys Road, one or more pubs in Aberdare and Tonypandy’s Pandy Inn, but in February 1972, where Pete resumes his travelogue, I was half-way through my undergraduate career and finding respite from academic life (mine involved the use of sterile mating in insect control) in five-a-side during the week and the pubs and depths of Yorkshire at the weekends*. Going to this game never entered my head. Luckily, it entered Pete Sixsmith‘s and he now begins a two-part edition of his outstanding series, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground
Daniel Bevan* – great Welsh name – is an aspiring sportswriter and broadcaster, the founder of the In Off The Post podcast and blog and an ardent Cardiff City supporter. He says he saw our current predicament coming to the extent that he predicted another relegation for Sunderland this season. He hasn’t changed his mind. And he thinks his Bluebirds will continue to fly high but not beyond a playoff position …
Everyone knows we can do it. Sadly, everyone also knows what seems to happen each time we say as much.
So straight over to the Salut! Sunderland jury. Does the fight to scramble away from the bottom of the Championship start with a good result at Cardiff or is our plight about to get even worse?
We have been this way before. Early activity in a transfer window seems positive and our hopes rise accordingly, only to be dashed by a combination of factors: the questionable SAFC managerial merry-go-round, an imbalance of expectation and delivery and the air of thick gloom hanging over the club.
But Chris Coleman’s first move really does look like a sound one. Jake Clarke-Salter, a ball-playing central defender brought on loan from Chelsea, “is supposed to be rather good”, says a Chelsea-supporting friend.
As Boro coasted to victory against SAFC in the FA Cup, Gary Bennett could be heard tellng listeners to the BBC Radio Newcastle commentary that it was the travelling supporters – no fewer than 4,476 – he felt sorry for. One of them was our own Pete Sixsmith, who emailed his report with a GLUM reference to another ‘depressing and dispiriting’ day. At least the SAFC Ladies team won (3-0 vs Birmingham), prompting my mischievous tweet:
— Colin Randall (@salutsunderland) January 7, 2018
Back in November, the Sunderland Echo‘s thoughtful columnist Tony Gillan posed the interesting question: “Are Jan Kirchhoff’s legs so wonky that he couldn’t be offered a rolling contract?