Hibernian Soapbox: a dreich day out with mime artists and casuals

Pete Sixsmith goes to Edinburgh, inspects the Fringe programme and then sees a match that makes him question his decision to watch football and not a spot of drama. A question reinforced by grim post-match encounter with the non-attending Hibs “casuals”, desperately sad and sub-human relics of football’s dark, yob days …


What is it
with our pre-season and heavy rain?

Three years ago, a downpour of biblical proportions deluged Dublin, leading to the cancellation of our game with Shamrock Rovers, two years ago the heavens opened as we arrived in Amsterdam, soaking those of us who had packed, rather than worn, waterproofs while last year we were soaked in Sinsheim prior to the Hoffenheim game.

This year, it was Scotland’s turn to turn the water on Wearside’s finest, as the rain came down in stair rods over that nation’s capital, turning Easter Road and its environs into a passable imitation of the streets of Venice at low tide. When it rains in Scotland, it does so with a vengeance, almost as if it wants to wash away the memories of Union in 1707.

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French Fancies: PSG flop good for football, allez Stee…eed

Image: Abdullah Al-Naser

Some Salut! Sunderland readers gave encouragement to the idea of maintaining our occasional look at French football. And there’s enough Sunderland interest in Ligue 1 this season to make it worthwhile …

STOP PRESS: ST ETIENNE, without Steed who was not eligible and played for the reserves instead, beat Bordeaux 2-1 away tonight – a great start and the defeat couldn’t have happened to more deserving opposition. Steed impressed in his run-out, showing plenty of verve and enthusiasm according to the official club site, though he ended up on the losing side (2-1). And is it going to an Arles-Avignon sort of season for Patrice Carteron’s Dijon? Walloped 5-1 at home by Gyan’s old club Rennes!

The headline in Saturday morning’s Le Figaro had the whole of French football trying to play catch-up with the Man City-style flash boys of Paris Saint-Germain. PSG flaunted their new Qatari-sourced wealth by spending the ludicrous sum of €43m for Palermo’s Argentinian attacking midfielder Javier Pastore just too late to start the season last night.

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Hibernian 0 SAFC 0: the phoney war’s over, now for Liverpool


So we end the pre-season build undefeated in Scotland and the North East, winless in Germany and Lancashire.

Without the slightest disrespect to York City, Kilmarnock, Hartlepool and Darlington, the four teams we have beaten in the friendlies, it is fair to assume Liverpool will present a somewhat tougher obstacle in the opening Premier League game at Anfield next Saturday.

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Sorry Bill, but keeping the faith is not optional

No I do not want another relegation battle to make things interesting. No, I do not want us to employ Joey Barton or any other recovering criminal just to annoy Newcastle United. And no, I do not measure the strength of my passion for Sunderland AFC by whether we are likely to challenge for a place in European competition.

For those reasons and more, I found no common ground with Bill Taylor’s article at Salut! Sunderland whose declining enthusiasm for our club means he will revert to looking out for our results, maybe catching us on TV in Canada but not really giving a hoot from one week to the next.

Being an exile affects people in different ways. Some never truly leave their place of origin, at least not in their hearts, while others thank their lucky stars they got away and would no sooner go back permanently than jump out of a 40th floor window.

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Taylor made: Sunderland and me – is this the last kiss?

Bill Taylor (left), with the Germany coach Joachim Low trip to Stuttgart


Yesterday saw M Salut’s old mate Bill Taylor writing in entertaining fashion at Salut! North about his first proper kiss (a form of intimacy that sounds extraordinarily outdate these days). Now for a rather more depressing tale: the return of Bill’s disenchantment with the club most readers of this site follow with limitless passion …

The editor of this blog has a lot to answer for.

Before Colin Randall brought Salut! Sunderland into existence and I started reading it, I was a very passive Mackem: a supporter more in the breach than the observance.

If there happened to be a Sunderland match on Canadian TV, I’d watch it with interest and pleasure. Or sometimes displeasure. But I’d watch.

Otherwise, I did little else than check the results every week, exult in their victories, shrug when they played a draw, curse when they got beaten. And then think no more of it for another week.

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Darlington/Hartlepool Soapbox: upbeat vibes, glowing Steed tribute

Pete Sixsmith was indeed at both Hartlepool and Darlington – I can barely bring myself to write The Northern Echo Darlington Arena, even if I did work for that august journal in what I fondly imagine to have been its heyday – but was defeated by technology at Darlo (he’d left his phone at home). This, then, is his full account of two comfortable wins …

One game to go before the season opener at Anfield and at Sixsmith Towers there is a growing feeling of optimism for season 2011-12. The Easter Road workout will surely give the final pointers to the line up Steve Bruce will go for on August 13.

The two games this week will have given him much to think about and also much to be pleased with. Of the two, the Hartlepool one was of far more use than the trip to Darlington, with it being against a higher ranking club and with a more competitive edge.

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God speed Steed. Bonne chance à Saint-Etienne. Tu nous manqueras

Image: Addick-tedKevin


Out of the Light, into the Cauldron … Salut! Sunderland offers thanks and best wishes to Steed Malbranque …

M Salut and M Malbranque can talk freely over a good bottle of sturdy Côtes du Rhône without fear of complaint from me if he happens to be chainsmoking Gauloises throughout.

We’d be able to agree that this football business can be, not to mince words, merdique. You win a place in the hearts of most of the fans of your club only to be sold on during some restructuring programme that leaves you “not featuring in the boss’s future plans”.

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Hartlepool 1 Sunderland 3: and is it farewell to Stee…eeed?

The news from down the A19 was that Sunderland won comfortably, 3-1 with goals from Gyan, Colback and Larsson.

Better still, Pete Sixsmith reports from the game, we took it seriously and the match produced “some good pointers”. Ian Porter, at Blackcats, was also encouraged by what he saw (see footnote*).

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Isaac ‘Jack’ McGorian: echoes of Bardsley from the Roaring Twenties

Isaac 'Jack' McGorian in 1939: captain, front row with ball between his knees, of Griqualand West Team in Kimberley vs England


SEE REVISED VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE AT THIS LINK

Not for nothing do we boast of going to the ends of the earth to find interesting snippets about Sunderland AFC. The story, for Salut! Sunderland‘s purposes, began in a coal-fired power station in the Transvaal.

Bill Richardson*, a Seaham lad who has not seen his home town or even country for a long, long time, works there. And this is what he wrote a month or two ago at the Blackcats list, an e-mail loop that brings together SAFC fans wherever they find themselves in the world:

I only found out at the weekend that one of the ladies I work with, father played for Sunderland 1926. His name was Jack McGorian.

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