Pete Sixsmith found the first half against Bolton deadly dull, the second satisfying enough to be able to look back with a more positive view of the whole game. Can we actually look forward to the first decent FA Cup run since Mick McCarthy took us to a semi-final (v Millwall) that we should have coasted?…

It’s nice to win an FA Cup tie. In all the years I have followed Sunderland we have fluctuated between good runs (73, 76, 92 and 04) and abysmal defeats (Everton 66, Orient 72, Brentford 06, Wigan 08 – feel free to insert any others) so it was good to win and to win a decent game against a side who seemed to take the competition and the game seriously.

Read more

Who needs the Queen?….

Pete Sixsmith looks back over the year and awards his own New Years Honours (Colin Randall explains the baby in a footnote)….

That’s Christmas over for another year. Hope you got lots of good presents and had a jolly good time in the bosom of your family – or at least in someone’s bosom.

I got some ace presents: a book I first read in 1958, a new shirt, a CD of Julian and Sandy from Round The Horne (although they sound suspiciously like Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott taking a training session), a book about the French Resistance (Bellion and Laslandes) and the kitschiest alarm clock in the history of the world brought back from Kuwait by a friend of mine who is teaching there. It’s bright blue, in the shape of a mosque and the alarm is a (very) approximate rendition of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Quite something!

On the negative side, there was a truly awful display at Everton which must have had Quinny, and whoever else is in the board room at the moment, doing impersonations of Corporal Jones; my failure to be in The Lounge Inn at Southport when Stevie G (allegedly) whacked the DJ despite being in the resort; and the repeated failure of this and previous Governments to include me in the New Year’s Honours List for services to Sunderland AFC and the persistent brutalising of schoolchildren in the Ferryhill and Chilton areas.

So, what better way to fritter away the dying embers of the Christmas holiday than coming up with my own New Year’s Honours list?

Read more

Ah for the romance of the FA Cup. The great leveller that gives a whiff of glory, however fleeting, to the lads from below, and sometimes deep below, the Premier League. Didn’t we all turn our thoughts in May back to the day – whether or not we were there, or even alive – our Division Two heroes overcame the then mighty Leeds United of Don Revie to win the cup? Don’t some of us possess replica shirts from the previous Cup Final win, against Preston North end in 1937? Don’t we all want Blyth Spartans to get one over Big Sam this weekend? Well, yes. But then, how many Premier bosses will field weakened sides, vaguely hoping for some sort of run but not if it means compromising prospects of a top six finish, or survival, in the league? And how many fans of either side will turn up at the Stadium of Light, eight days after a 44,000+ gate for Sam’s real team? But hey, we’re due a run ourselves after the dismal early exits of recent times. Craig Johnson* – found at the Bolton Wanderers FC fansite BWFC UK Forum – feels the same about his club. It’ll be his first visit to Sunderland, and he expects to go back to Lancashire with Bolton’s fourth round place we secured, or at least a Reebok replay to look forward to……

Hello and happy new year to all the fans of Sunderland AFC from a supporter of the greatest football team in Lancashire, Bolton Wanderers.

Let’s get on to the topic of our clubs up and coming encounter… I shall be making my first ever trip to the Stadium of Light and Sunderland in general this Saturday.

With former Wanderers first team coach Ricky Sbragia as your new manager and Bolton fan favourite El Hadji Diouf currently playing for you, it should certainly make for a fantastic atmosphere and a great game of football.

Our recent run of form makes our 4-1 victory over you in November seem like a very long time ago. Our home defeat at the hands of our arch rivals Wigan Athletic last Sunday has left a very bitter taste and all Bolton fans are hoping that a good performance and a victory on Saturday will give our players the confidence to turn our recent poor league form around.

Maybe it’ll be the 100th Bolton victory in a match I’ve attended. See you all on Saturday and may the best team win. Now it’s time for me to tackle the questions:

Read more

With Ricky Sbragia taking his first game as manager of Sunderland, Pete Sixsmith remembers what it’s like to be the new man in charge, and reflects on the best match he ever saw. Unfortunately, it’s not Everton v. Sunderland.

When I started my first job in teaching in the dim and distant past, what you wanted was a good first day to stamp your personality on the students and the school. What I got was a group of boys who had been told by the government that they could not leave at 15 to go and work at Smart and Browns or Black and Decker, but they had to stay on until they were 16. They were quite happy to show the new teacher that they would not take a blind bit of notice of him; therefore, first day as a real teacher was a bit of a disaster.

I would imagine that Ricky Sbragia would have wanted a good first day as manager of Sunderland. He didn’t get it. Instead of D4 jumping out of windows, he got defenders and mid field players giving away senseless free kicks just outside the area, allowing Mikael Arteta to show just how he relishes playing against us. Last year he twisted Ian Harte inside out; this year he breached our wall twice to wrap the game up by half time.

Everton had no forwards but managed to score three times; we had two forwards who have great reputations and about whom we wax lyrical at times – and we didn’t manage a shot on target until the 70th minute. Says it all doesn’t it!

Read more

Like the sentimental brute who batters his girlfriend black and blue, then slobbers over her with protestations of love? A bit unfair…but Greg O’Keeffe*, who has an Everton website called Gwlad Tidings, was there to watch his boys maul Sunderland last season. And he enjoyed it. But he also has a real soft spot for SAFC – a “proper club” and much more appealing than the Mags to boot. We knew that, of course, but it’s nice to hear someone else say it. He also reckons we’ll get a draw at Goodison tomorrow, and we need one – or better – after dropping points against Blackburn…. For Pete Sixmith’s report on that game Click Here

Irrational hatreds are one of the many enduring things that make football fun.

I can’t stand Aston Villa, for no real reason, and Tranmere Rovers make my skin crawl.
But just as there are some clubs I loathe for reasons I’d struggle to explain, there are those, like Sunderland, I just like.

They are a “proper” football club and I mean that without the patronising cliché tone it could be mistaken for (Everton often get the same verdict from neutrals).

Maybe it’s the long-suffering yet knowledgeable, humorous fans. Maybe it’s the recent Irish link, whatever, I always like to see them do well.

I often meet people who tell me they feel the same way about Everton. Neither club could be described as flashy or arrogant. Sure, you’ve had a few quid to throw about of late but it’s hardly Champions League mega-bucks.

Anyway, I enjoy Sunderland visits to Goodison and as someone who lived for a short time in Gateshead I can fully understand your dislike of the mind-set of Newcastle fans. They definitely have a shared sense of arrogance based on very little substance.

Good luck for the rest of your season. And now the questions…

Read more

As SAFC confirm an 18 month contract for Ricky Sbragia, there’s little rest for Pete Sixsmith who, dismayed by the lack of Christmas Day matches, compensates by taking in two on Boxing Day.

The worst thing about Christmas is that there is rarely any football to be found on Christmas Eve and absolutely none on Christmas Day. I vaguely remember walking up to Headingley in the 1950s with my dad to watch the traditional game with Wakefield Trinity, but I can’t ever remember seeing football on Christmas Day. The last full league programme was on Christmas Day 1957, so since then people like me have had to put up with presents and turkey and brandy and bloody Cliff Richard and just hang on until Boxing Day for the football fix.

I can usually get a couple of games in on the 26th and this year was no exception. The majority of Northern League games are being played on the 27th. But the Billingham derby between Town (the junior club) and Synthonia (named after a particularly smelly chemical) kicked off at 11.00am and resulted in a deserved win for Town. They conceded an equaliser with two minutes to go, but grabbed the winner in injury time – shades of us under Keane last year!

So, having bagged one more game (season’s total 92) I set off up the A19 hopeful that number 93 would see an important home win – although I thought that the new man in charge of Rovers would prove a much harder proposition than the self styled Guv’nor.

Read more

Boxing Day looms. McCallister’s taken another dive (remember that one against us that fooled Graham Barber?), Big Sam’s got Blackburn off to a winning start of his managership and we’re chuffed after scoring four in successive games.
But let’s hear it for Reidy You’re a Star! That’s how he signs on at the Blackburn Rovers Spammers site, but to Salut! Sunderland he is Mick Roberts*, the first Rovers fan to stand up and say who is he ahead of a game against us. We had some great contributions from DodgyGambit and Vinjay ahead of the Carling Cup and Ewood Park clashes in November, but not from anyone wanting to identify himself beyond fan site noms de guerre. That’s fair enough, but Mick is especially welcome to these pages. We also have answers from “StLedge”, which we can fairly assume is NOT his real name, so let us get straight into the questionnaire.

Since our first two games, Keane has gone, Ince has been replaced by Big Sam. And we’re both in trouble. What next?

I think it’s going to be tight around the bottom of the table. Christmas will give a clearer indication of what’s going to happen, especially to the Rovers. If Sam gets us up and running quickly, I think we can get out of it. The same could be said for Sunderland, but you have to get the right man in quickly or I think you could struggle. – Mick

Both clubs have lost the managers they had the last time both our clubs met, and both clubs haven’t faired as well as either set of fans would have wanted for their clubs, as the goals set out by the expectant fans, whether realistic or quietly over ambitious, have certainly changed or at the least been put on hold.
What next?? – Getting away from the bottom of the league is no doubt on the forefront of many fans minds, the next 7 to 10 games will be key in the turn around of the clubs’ season, and after that any league climb will be a welcome bonus. – StLedge

Read more

Pete Sixsmith comes over all poetic as he witnesses an important and impressive win over the Tigers

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the city of Kingston-upon-Hull could be described as paradise, but it was certainly not hell for the happy band of Red and Whites who trundled home along the M62/A1 on Saturday, celebrating a so impressive 4-1 away win.

We won by a similar score in 1976, thanks to the likes of Gary Rowell, Joe Bolton and Jimmy Montgomery. All three are local born legends whose names are uttered in reverential terms whenever Sunderland fans of a certain vintage meet to quaff a few pints. After Saturday, it may well be that 30 years on from now, we will not be thinking local, but thinking French and instead of reminiscing about Joe Bolton’s terriers and Gary Rowell’s impeccable credentials as a Seaham lad, we will be waxing lyrical about Steed’s thunderous shot and Djibril’s pace, power and green Mohican.

Ricky Sbragia (or Spragia as Tyne Tees Useless captioned him last Friday) could not have wished for a better start. This time, he and his co-workers showed exactly what they were capable of by preparing a team to win a game against opposition who were neither monumentally superior to us or so woeful that Shildon Railway would have given them a good game.

Look at the scenario; Hull are on a high after a good draw at Anfield, their manager – a self-confessed Sunderland fanatic – would be desperate to put one over his first and lasting love, they have a full house with kids dressed up as Tigers and men dressed up as Santa, and three more points could put them in a UEFA Cup place at Christmas. And what happens? Sunderland swing into town and give them a real going over.

Read more