Sixer’s substitute’s Soapbox: plenty to enjoy at Hartlepool

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Malcolm Dawson climbs up on the soapbox
Malcolm Dawson climbs up on the soapbox

Malcolm Dawson writes…..the past few days have been a hectic time for our star reporter, Pete Sixsmith. Having been at the Shildon v Stranraer pre-season friendly, endured a soaking at Bishop Auckland, sunned himself at cricket in Scarborough, taken in a grand tour of Yorkshire mill towns by rail and then on to Carlisle for the first of back to back warm up games, last night’s visit to Hartlepool has left him exhausted.

This bright sunny Thursday morning sees him lying supine on the red velvet chaise longue at Sixsmith Towers with his copy of The Kenneth Horne Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and a DVD of The Hundred Greatest Moments from the North Dorset and South Wiltshire Combination Alliance League – Reserves Division to get him through the day. That and ever attentive butler Pardew, who keeps our sage’s glass of Dent Brewery “Owd Tup” topped up and regularly supplies him with morsels of Taylor’s pork pie.

So it falls to me to give the eye-witness view of events at Victoria Park last night and very interesting it was too ..

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Fifty years of Sunderland openers: (2) visions of hell at Millwall

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millwall prog2

The New Den is hardly the Old Den. Back in 2000, a semi-reformed Millwall Yob-and-Proud-of-It – he’d become a published author telling of his exploits – told me people were hypocritical about football hooligans because they created all the atmosphere in grounds. Pete Sixsmith, looking back in the second of this series on opening fixtures of his past, could be forgiven for thinking otherwise after experiencing a special Old Den welcome reserved for supporters of visiting teams with the audacity to score a few times. Some of the assailants that day, 40 years ago, will now be in their 80s and, presumably, causing havoc with their walking sticks in south London old people’s homes …

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Sixer’s Carlisle Soapbox: the splendour of England, the torpor of friendly football

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From the lads at camporetro.com**
From the lads at camporetro.com**

Pete Sixsmith ought to have been a professional football writer, as his priceless accounts at Salut! Sunderland demonstrate season after season. He could have had travel writing as a sideline, as this description of a grand day out on the trains of northern England also shows. Mind, he isn’t a bad teacher by all accounts so society probably feels it is getting the best of all worlds from the sum of his contributions. Back to that day out: there’s always something waiting to spoil life’s pleasures and Pete ran into it at Brunton Park (there’s a clip of the goals at Darlington to make up for it) …

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Summer Gold: (3) Tasmin Archer, No 1 star among Sunderland’s celebrity supporters

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ta 2

Back in 2007, when Salut! Sunderland was a long way from its first million hits, we reproduced a series of Celebrity Supporters interviews originally written a few years earlier for Wear Down South, the newsletter of London branch of the SAFCSA.

It had been the idea of Joan Dawson, whose brother Malcolm is these days Salut!’s deputy editor. What was intended as the final piece – https://safc.blog/2007/06/the-celebs-we-cornered-and-the-ones-we-didnt/, wrapping up all the successes and failures of the series – appeared on June 6. On the same day, wondering if there might be scope for a new batch of interviews, I wrote to Tasmin Archer, the soul singer who’d had a No 1 hit with Sleeping Satellite in 1992. I’d heard she supported Sunderland; she replied the next day and an interview was set up.

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Sixer’s Darlington Soapbox: Sunderland home if not dry in five-goal romp

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Pete Sixsmith gets the old Soapbox out once more
Pete Sixsmith gets the old Soapbox out once more

Pete Sixsmith, in the company of Salut! Sunderland’s deputy editor Malcom Dawson, had an enjoyable afternoon despite the rain, watching the first goals of SAFC’s pre-season programme in a 5-1 dismantling of Darlington, or rather the form Darlo now take after all the woes of recent seasons. That meant, for example, a trip to Bishop, not Darlington itself. Let Pete explain …

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