The Johnny Crossan Story (3): who was ‘brilliant’, who was ‘priceless’?

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Only tiny glimpses of Johnny Crossan, from after his SAFC days, in this clip of a 4-1 home defeat of Man City by Chelsea. In one of them he acts as peacemaker after Mike Summerbee appears to stamp on Eddie McCreadie. But it has been a privilege to run the interview with him, not least because although Johnny played with Colin Bell, Mike Doyle, Summerbee and other City stars, it is his time at Sunderland that he remembers most fondly …

A great pleasure it has been to bring the thoughts of Johnny Crossan to readers of Salut! Sunderland. My thanks to the many people, including those too young to have seen him play, who have visited the site to read about him. This is the final instalment.

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The Johnny Crossan Story (2): hero with ‘a wee bit venom’

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With thanks to www.therokerend.com


Where were we? This is the second part of the Johnny Crossan interview. There will be a third, coming soon, and the first can be seen here.

The amount of time Johnny was willing to give up for a piddling little fan site was quite astonishing. But before we resume the full sequence of questions and answers, I have something that needs a special mention up high.

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Soapbox: Liverpool, greed and money for nothing

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Just when you thought money in football could hardly be more unfairly distributed as it is, along comes some Anfield suit with plans to make it unfairer still. At least Pete Sixsmith was able to enjoy some non-league fare and Rugby League before a new encounter with the ugly face of corporate football …

What a peaceful weekend away from the noise and commotion of the FA Premier League. I spent my Saturday afternoon watching a thrilling local derby between Shildon and Bishop Auckland, in front of a crowd of about 300, no TV cameras, a smattering of replica shirts and the ability to walk around the ground chatting to various folk while watching the game.

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The Johnny Crossan Story (1): Manchester City 0 SAFC 1

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With thanks to www.therokerend.com

To Sunderland supporters of a certain vintage, Johnny Crossan – who scored 39 times for us in 82 games between 1962 and 1965 – is something of a legend.

“Before him, all my heroes were those of my dad,” one fan, Keith Scott, was telling Pete Sixsmith at a recent (Reserves) match. “Johnny Crossan was the first who was my own.”

Salut! Sunderland‘s mission to obtain an interview with the former Northern Ireland inside forward, 46 years after he last kicked a ball at Roker Park, is a legacy of another long-in-the-tooth SAFC follower’s trip to Johnny’s home town, Stroke City (as in Derry-stroke-Londonderry, according to where you fit in the nationalist/loyalust divide).

Pete Horan had been sent to work with people at the local tax office. In his luggage on departure was a book on Crossan that Pete Sixsmith asked him to take to his sports shop and have autographed. Raising the question at work, Pete was told: “You’re in luck: come along for a spot of five-a-side tonight and you’ll meet him.”

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Dear Steve: we’re ugly

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………………………………………………………………………… Dear Sunderland have been rubbishing the weekend talk of Steve Bruce’s job being on the line with Martin O’Neill …

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Taking Paris by storm: Sunderland, the play

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Images: V Tonelli

Now if only it could be Sunderland’s play taking Paris by storm. That for all their Qatari gold, we’d gone to the Parc des Princes and walloped Paris Saint-German 3-0 to proceed still further in the Champions’ League.

There’s the fantasy. Here’s the reality, or Sunderland as presented on the Parisian stage.

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Jonathan Wilson: the candystripe passions of grandfather, father and son

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Jonathan Wilson''s book on a Sunderland great

NB: A tweet by the author, coinciding with World Alzheimer’s Month, has brought this poignant and outstandingly written article a deserved new burst of interest, causing Salut! Sunderland to promote it back to the front page of the site nearly a year after it first appeared. It will stay prominently displayed for the rest of September …

I am proud to say that permission has been received for the reproduction of this quite exceptional and moving account by Jonathan Wilson*, the Sunderland-supporting Guardian sportswriter, of memories of his dad, and an exchange as death approached, that summed up the passion handed down through generations …

Last year, after my dad had died, I stayed holding his hand for about quarter of an hour and then left the nurses to it. In the hospital waiting room I made three calls. The first was to Sunderland Civic Centre to register the death. The second was to the undertakers. And the third was to The Independent to tell them that I was, after all, free to cover Sunderland v Burnley the next day.

I know a lot of people found that odd. To be honest, looking back, it seems odd to me. At the time, though, it seemed perfectly natural.

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When supporting Sunderland means never being happy

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With unforgivable lack of loyalty, my younger daughter supports Liverpool. She was born in Bristol, but that’s no excuse.

Even less loyally, she bought my wife as part of a birthday present a copy of the book How To Wean a Man Off Football, by Ronni Ancona and Alistair McGowan. What is she trying to do to my life?

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When talk turns to pies: a North-eastern obsession

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steak&kidneyImage: Andrew Fogg


Fortified by a trip home to the North East – no football, sadly, but to be at the retirement do for the Northern Echo‘s brilliant columnist Mike Amos (click here for more of that) – and by renewed acquaintance with pork pies, sausages and the like, I thought this thread on the Blackcats list deserved a wider audience …

As is often the case, our own Jeremy Robson chipped in with the opener. Whenever football’s thin on the ground – and let’s face it, internationals don’t really count – other topics crop up. What follows is not much more than a taster of the full thread; I will post the rest if there seems, as it were, to be appetite. And I am sure what is pictured above would be sent straight back by many Mackems, especially the steeped-in-nostalgia folk who belong to the Blackcats list …

Jeremy:

* It’s a very slow Blackcats day. Has nobody got any pease pudding crack or pasty stories or owt?

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