After a season like that, it may seem a stretch of even the most fevered imagination to suppose Sunderland supporters are currently feeling at a loose end without football. But there are fans and fans; I wouldn’t be surprised if some of ours already cannot wait for the delights of Burton, Barnsley and Brentford …and someone has come up with some suggestions for how to kill time until those mighty football occasions come round. They range from the blindingly obvious to, well, you decide …
Monsieur Salut writes: what is it about football and pies? Things many of us rarely eat in normal, civilised settings suddenly become sought after at football grounds. I loved the idea of the Roker Pie Shop and remember popping in sometimes but have no recollection of how good their food was.
I do have faint memories of steaming hot and delicious steak and kidney pies Pete Sixsmith and I would eat in Durham while waiting for the Football Echo to arrive as we made our way home from Roker Park. These days I probably buy pies on only one in 10 or more stadium visits (and no, I don’t order sushi instead). Hardly an end-of-season review, but here you go all the same. It’s a search for the best football pies going and reaches us via a writer from Coral …
1992 and all that: Nathalie in red, her dad in, er, a gruesome away top
Nathalie Randall is Monsieur Salut’s younger daughter. She plays football better than he ever did and tries to make up for supporting Liverpool by liking Sunderland, too. Tonight, she watched Manchester United restore a little joy to a great but grieving city …
Jake: ‘I did think a pile of manure might be the right image’ Peter Lynn is a great asset to Salut! Sunderland, with his eternal optimism and absolute love of the experience of being among fellow-Sunderland fans at matches home and away. And while he declares himself an oldish git, he is no such thing but – as I write – on a demanding walking trip in North Wales.
Jake: has anyone suffered more pain at football than Sixer, on the right though not remotely so in politics, and Sobs?
Monsieur Salut writes: scroll down on the right of this article and you’ll find him: the perplexed Coventry fan who wonders that a grudge has been held for all this time: ‘my god, you’ve been keeping this bottled up since the 76/77 season!!!! Any football fan who takes pleasure in another team’s (and not even rivals’) downfall to this degree needs some hobbies…’
‘You know what?’ as they say on X Factor. ‘We have.’ It was blatant cheating, a disgraceful episode and ought to have been punished, even if it has to be accepted that a relegated team also needs to look back on its own failings. Even if no one would have scored a winner anyway. Let Pete Sixsmith bring us up to date, in a rather tantalising way, with his series on Sunderland relegations ….
Colin Randall writes: I commend this epic piece from our associate editor John McCormick, his superbly argued but also entertaining contribution to our series of end-of-season reviews ….
You might be telling people
“ it’s a chance to rebuild”.
You might be saying
“Now we can bring the young’ns through”
Or you might just be thinking
“at least we won’t have to watch that rubbish next season”.
And maybe you’re forcing a smile as you say it.
Recent events might even have made it a genuine smile. But are you really happy? How do you really feel?
M Salut: two credits to SAFC, Jermain and Rob Hutchison’s daughter Olivia, star of the parachute jump for Bradley …
Rob Hutchison is not always restricted to one-word, one-mark ratings after games he’s (mostly) seen us lose. Scenes at Stamford Bridge after Sunday’s thrashing caught his eye …
That’s Barry on the far left (not his political position)
Barry Emmerson is a footballing man in the mould of Pete Sixsmith. In other words, he knows his stuff. He told Ellis Short as much when they found themselves answering the calls of nature at the same time at the Stadium of Light recently. Barry modestly suggested he could sort out Sunderland’s troubles and handed the owner his business card. Chances are it will be used only if Mr Short ever needs Barry’s comfortable private-hire limousine rather than to talk football. But let’s hope the owner is an avid reader of Salut! Sunderland and, having parted company with David Moyes, gives some thought to Barry’s views (he has already floated the idea of a Keano-O’Shea dream ticket, though that might require a major act of Irish-American reconciliation …
Colin Randall writes: the horrendous events of Manchester, death and injury inflicted by one person with nothing to offer humanity, with the possible help of others, diminishes the appetite for the petty subject of football. But part of refusing to allow terrorism to win involves doing all we can to continue normal life. People have taken the trouble to respond to requests for end-of-season reviews and it is right, while expressing sympathy for and solidarity with the victims, that we should keep the series going.
Here, Mick Goulding, a familiar if only occasional contributor, expertly assesses the cycle of disappointment that goes with supporting Sunderland ….
Robert Chapman, an ever-welcome stand-in for Pete Sixsmith when the Sixer considers a game unworthy of his presence, was at Stamford Bridge. Here, as respite from all the Moyes Gone stuff, is his report of a final, ultimately humilirting day following SAFC …
