“The town is the club the club is the town” – that is Aaron Wright*‘s grand description of Burnley. Yet he’s from the other side of the Pennines and is the first in his family to support the club. All the same, he is passionate, knowledgeable, opinionated and just 17. Wasn’t too keen on Steven Fletcher and was unimpressed by Ryan Noble but hails Gus Poyet as a miracle worker …
Colin Randall writes: John McCormick supports Sunderland, of course, but lives in Liverpool. Even if he did not, he’d be entitled to a view about Liverpool/Everton stadium plans. After all, we’ve all been, or most of us have, to Anfield and Goodison. Here is what John makes of the interminable ramblings in Scouseland about where the two sides should play …
All the way from the Black Sea comes this sign of the globalisation of Sunderland support.
The picture comes from a Spurs supporter, George Dearsley, an acquaintance who cut his journalistic teeth on the Northern Echo.
Our youngest columnist by some margin, Keir Bradwell, 14 at the end of this month, quickly follows Pete Sixsmith back into action with the return of his man-by-man SAFC player ratings. You are at liberty to disagree …
Burnley away and another chance to Guess the Score will come soon enough. But first, let’s hear about a winner, a supporter whose mother moved south but had the good sense and exceptional style to go back to her native Sunderland to give birth to each of her children …
Bill Cowell is one of this site’s more regular visitors and, via the Comments, contributors. He has been watching Sunderland since, wait for it, the late 1940s. It is fitting that he should have won the first sponsored instalment of the Guess the Score feature.
Those who were there will be able to say “I was there” and those who weren’t there will be able to say “I wish I’d been there” but no one will be able to say how we came away with a point. Except, perhaps, our own Pete Sixsmith, who eschewed the triumphalism of the last night of the Proms to bring us this report:
Gus Poyet saw it as an incredible game of football. Some of us felt it was an incredible escape! But let the boss speak before we do …
Monsieur Salut guessed at ESPN that Gus Poyet would settle for a point. Pete Sixsmith said at haf time he’d take the 1-1 we then had. Anyone who saw or listened to the game will know we got out of jail. Spurs dominated, threatened, hit woodwork, went close too often for comfort. It made the wretched simulation of Erik Lamela (our ‘Who are You?’ interviewee did warn us about him) and Danny Rose seem so unnecessary. But maybe they had a point; after the second equaliser we might even have snatched it. Sixer’s customary seven-word instant verdict (his last one stretched only to six words, until corrected rather late, but never mind that) tells you all you need to now for now…
After the great Scottish referendum debate inspired by Birflatt Boy and drawing in a couple of thousand new readers, the next item for posting needed to be a golden. Here is it …
An unusual request suddenly popped up at the Facebook group of Salut! Sunderland.
Back in February 2012, Clare Owen found the wedding ring you see above outside the Stadium of Light after SAFC thumped Norwich City 3-0 to roar to an unlikely eighth top under Martin O’Neill.
Not the easiest of things to lose, you may feel, unless it was very loose fitting in the first place or the wearer’s finger had suddenly lost a lot of weight. But lost it was.
Birflatt Boy emerges from his customary shadows to rue the possible departure of the Scots from the UK. Has Fletch let on as to where he stands? What do George Herd and Billy Hughes make of it all? We cannot honestly imagine Phil Bardsley having a view one way or the other. The headline reference to Celtic is naturally tongue-in-cheek with no intention of offending people who believe a big chunk of the west of Scotland is already a fifth province of Ireland …
The devolution debate and upcoming referendum on Scottish independence has got my mind racing.
By the end of next week we may be facing the prospect of a genuine border crossing as we head north. Who can say which way the vote is going to go. Alex Salmond claims that Scotland is on the brink of history. The same might have been said about all manner of eye-watering historical blunders too.