Sixer’s Sentiments: Joey Barton, Premier League withdrawal symptoms and Super League allure

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Sixer's a real brick, says Jake; all in all, say Class 3C ...

Pete Sixsmith has been back at the chalk face, enriching young lives and earning the means to enable him to attend Premier League games again next season. Or will he forsake round footballs for the squashed variety? Ask him at the wrong moment, when he’s just been thinking about Joey Barton or recapturing his Rugby League youth, and you risk hearing a disturbing response …


With the season over, not a huge interest in the playoffs and even less in England’s fortunes, anoraks like myself desperately search for a weekend fix.

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Coldplay to la corrida, Futureheads to flamingos

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And at least I can claim two of the four subjects have Sunderland connections …

It is not every week that combines a world supergroup in full rehearsal for a gig at the Stadium of Light; a Spanish matador taking on six bulls in one session (not all at once, of course – that would shorten the bulls’ odds of survival too much); talk of Sunderland’s best band, or second best according to taste; and the natural sights of the Carmargue.

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A Sunderland footballing odyssey from Gateshead to Southport

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Bobby Gurney through Jake's eyes

Crikey! John McCormick has turned writing for Salut! Sunderland into the craft of jigsaw creator, or perhaps more like that of the inventor of snakes and ladders. Discussing ups and downs that have followed the exclusion from the Football League of Gateshead 52 years ago, always looking out for SAFC links, he weaves an intricate pattern of football history …

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Corrie’s Sunderland connections. Sorry, lads, they don’t include Michelle Keegan

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Coronation Street

Glenda Young, who runs a highly successful blog about the world’s longest running TV soap is also Sunderland-daft, passionate about the city and the club. And she is a friend of Salut! Sunderland’s; we were happy to help out when she came looking for contributions to the history of Wearside connections with the series, though we were unable to come up with anything for Michelle or her role as Tina O’Brien McIntyre …

The photo above is from StormyDog’s Flickr pages and you can see more by cicking on the image.

And this, under the headline ”From Wearside to Weatherfield – Sunderland Coronation St connections”, is what Glenda made of it for R&R Life, a Sunderland news and lifestyle site …

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Sunderland Review of the Season: (4) a mixed start to O’Neill era

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Sixer by Jake

This season, Monsieur Salut has decided not to offer his own end-of-season report. Not because he felt so demotivated at the end of it, though he did, but because it is not really fair to make such an appraisal on too few games attended and the rest followed by a combination of consistently admirable coverage by Nick Barnes and Gary Bennett for BBC Radio Newcastle (heard via the SAFC club site), lamentable stop-start internet streams – Jake did point the way, late in the season, to a slightly more reliable link but even that failed on the final day – and even, once or twice, Pete Sixsmith‘s text messages.

Pete, you see, was at every game; his accounts for these pages were a mixture of superb football analaysis and eloquent travelogue, but also of hope and despair. His commitment reached a level unseen from most of the squad at the back end of the season and his words were a pleasure to handle. Here, to end Salut! Sunderland‘s 2012 series of reviews, is his verdict …

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Magpies, Mackems and mugs: another flyer hits the dust

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Rob helpfully added the prop

M Salut is heading along the road to join a 45,000-strong crowd watching Coldplay warm up for the SoL with a concert in Nice. While he’s away at the gig, you can come up with a prize-winning gag …

What is it with magpies and Kent? Perhaps some less ornitholologically challenged reader of Salut! Sunderland can explain why they keep falling from the skies, usually right in front of our friend Rob.

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Sunderland end-of-season reviews: (3) the hope of glory shines on

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Jake finds MON in pensive mood

Salut! Sunderland sees great writing every week from subscribers to the Blackcats e-mail list. But in perhaps another sign of the flat end-of-season feelings induced by SAFC’s uninspiring finale, almost none responded to an invitation to offer their reflections here. Nic Wiseman**, once co-editor of a SAFC fanzine and these days a professional gardener, bucked the trend. And refusing to enter the summer on a downbeat note, he detects the green shoots of revival …

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Darren Bent, QPR, Wigan and Liverpool: dreams, projects and £££

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Stephen Goldsmith ponders life, wonders whether visiting NUFC or AVFC fans will allow mention of their clubs

As if we hadn’t banged on about Villa quite enough (though we do wonder how many Villans don’t yet know one of theirs won the top prize in our prestigious ”Who are You?” awards), now we’re at it again. Or, rather we’re not, not really. Stephen Goldsmith* – as Goldy – has been a frequent, thoughtful contributor to Comments and simply uses the Darren Bent example as the starting point for a riveting read on the glossary of want-away footballing hypocrisy …

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