Pete Sixsmith gets his 2010-2011 Soapbox erected in time for the big kick-off and, like Colin Randall, harks back to when football was really football and men were men (or lads of not quite 16) ….
What do these numbers have in common? 46;10;2?
They are the number of seasons that Colin and me, Niall Quinn and Steve Bruce have been associated with Sunderland AFC.
Great minds … small minds … think alike … never differ. Colin Randall and Pete Sixsmith both thought of writing about the opening game and both found themselves wallowing in memories of long ago. Colin has a nicer pic to go with his than Pete’s old Soapbox image – but come back in a couple of hours for the essential Sixsmith preview …
Every so often, a comment attributed to a female SAFC fan appears in the sadly neglected Salut! Smiles slot where you currently find Danny Dichio down the left-hand column. Those comments are usually from the lips, or keyboard, of Claire Reidlinger, from the only Washington the world needs to know about. A lovely e-mail offering this pic – “me and the bairn and Filbert the Fox at the Leicester friendly for yer nice Salut thingy” – inspired these thoughts about opening games …
Chelsea. Brings to mind that fabulous Quinn/SuperKev destruction of them in 1999. Sky-high prices for away tickets. Not the cuddliest team or fans in the Premier. But we do know some lovely people who support the Blues and they were utterly deserving of the title last season. AND we ended up top of a very special Chelsea mini-league: ahead, on goal difference, of Villa, Wigan and Stoke among teams they scored seven or eight against. After Man Utd, Chelsea – in the form of Denise, from thechelseablog.org – came calling for the Salut! Sunderland take on life …
There’s another of those Q&As coming soon – this time my answers to questions from a Chelsea site – and this is just a bit of pre-season housekeeping.
But I wanted to salute Will, Sam and the others at footballunited.com for having, overnight, passed the 5,000 mark in blocking a path to this site for the cretins, charlatans and geeks who make up the fast-growing international army of internet spammers.
Who would you choose for Sunderland from the Manchester United squad? Which game against United do you remember most, for good or ill? See how your answers would have differed from mine …
The Republik of Mancunia is a United website run by Scott the Red, with whom Salut! Sunderland had friendly relations last season barring a minor fall-out over Chris – (Phil, you idiot: Chris was Makin – ed)Bardsley’s dive, as judged by the ref, or fall, as I saw it.
Scott thought it all the worse because Bardsley’s a Salford lad and knew how much winning potentially to meant to his boyhood and former professional club. I said that was the sort of tosh we come out with in drink: a dive’s a dive, reprehensible irrespective of the individual or circumstances.
We’re off. And who better to kick off the new season of Who Are You? questionnaires than Kevin Ball*? No. Their Kevin Ball, who lives amid the pixies, smugglers and clotted cream of far-off Devon, but is a Bluenose par excellence and runs the superb Joys and Sorrows fan site. Kevin also won a little Salut! Sunderland prize last season for this, the best best response to our notorious Eduardo “would you take it or be ashamed?” diving question: “I’m old fashioned, I can’t abide cheating. I don’t care if it is a Blues player or not. I would be furious.”
Salut! Sunderland The real stuff starts again. Have you forgotten the World Cup already?
Is there a World Cup happening?
So the speculation – now confirmed by the club – is that Kenwyne Jones is on his way out of the Stadium of Light. Good thing, bad thing? We’ve promoted the story back to the top of the site because of the interest it has generated …
Looking back, we can allow ourselves to say what a shame we didn’t accept silly money from Spurs for Kenwyne Jones. The papers said £20m was offered. That may have been an exaggeration but certainly a great deal of money was at stake.
And odd flashes aside, what has he done for us since then?
Three days to go for the first match. And only three hours or so to go for our first Who Are They? questionnaire – minus, to the relief of Gooners and dive enthusiasts everywhere, a certain question …
The dawn of a new season brings the usual mix of excitement, hope and fear. And the return of one of Salut! Sunderland‘s most popular features.
It seems an awful long way to go to see the Lads comfortably beaten in a friendly, depressing everyone about the start of the real season.
The trip is over. We are back in County Durham, tired and worn out, after a 70km detour through northern France, because the bloody navigator in the car thought Ghent was to the east of Brussels and not to the west.
We just about got there. With the help of readers, a couple of emergency nominations and a spectacular own goal from Peter Crouch to fill the last gap (P for Peter), we now have targets for the odd burst of booing for each letter of the alphabet. The posting remains open to improvements suggested by Salut! Sunderland readers …
If you are thinking of nominating your own candidates, bear in mind the basic rules that appear in a footnote**:
* A is for Anyone who played what Johan Cruyff magisterially called anti-football, for the Netherlands versus Spain (see individual entries). And for Nicolas Anelka (see B)
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