.…in which Pete Sixsmith welcome attempts to turn the Stadium of Light dressing room into a new League of Nations….

The news from the Stadium just gets better.

I nearly drove the car into a lorry when I heard that we had signed Djibril Cissé, albeit on a year’s loan. He is another player who has touch, pace and a pedigree that would go down well at Crufts. Compare this signing with what we brought in three years ago – let’s face it, they were more suited to the Leeholme and District Lurcher Show.

This morning’s paper says that Roy is hoping to bring in at least two more new players before the weekend. We could end up with a staggering seven new faces when we turn out at White Hart Lane, all speaking foreign languages like Finnish, French and Cockney (if Ferdinand signs).

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To find out the connection between SAFC and Joseph Stalin, read on, as Pete Sixsmith delivers his first match report of the season proper.

There’s a poignant bit in Blackadder IV, when the ace pen pusher Captain Darling is sent to the front by crazy General Melchett. As befits a mild-mannered man who wanted to work at Pratt and Sons and keep wicket for the Croydon Gentlemen, the strongest epithet he can come up with is “bugger”.

That’s exactly how I felt when Torres crashed the ball into the bottom corner of Gordon’s net on Saturday.

I can get upset when we concede. I have been known to shout a lot more than “bugger” at goalkeepers, defenders, referees and linesmen as we have conceded a crucial goal.

But not this time.

In fact, for a split second I considered putting my hands together and applauding a superb strike from a player who I (and many others) picked out as a star when we first saw him at New Ferens Park, Durham playing for Spain in a UEFA Under 17 Championship. I resisted the temptation.

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Pete Sixsmith says it was cruel.

Fatima, the Emirati work experience student I turned into a sort-of Sunderland fan (read all about it here, or in the new A Love Supreme), sent a text from Thailand saying she’d longed for an equaliser, adding: “Considering the slaughtering predicted by my Liverpool-till-death companions, Sunderland played well.”

Even my disloyally Liverpool-supporting daughter says we were unlucky.

In the end, though, we lost because Torres had one reasonable chance and took it in glorious style while Diouf had three and never looked liked converting any of them.

Then there was Murphy’s weak header from a good position. And for all our neat play, including some exquisite movement, especially in the first half, precious little else in front of goal.

Carlos Edwards was at his most ineffectual when he came on, more frightened rabbit than man of magic capable of producing a winner or, subsequently, equaliser.

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Salut! Sunderland welcomes all SAFC fans, and any strays who support other clubs but find themselves here by accident or design, to the 2008-2009 season.

Despite our surprisingly low ranking (119th when last we looked) in the Soccerlinks hit list – which seems to be based on a much lower number of “unique visitors” than independent statistical records suggest is true – our daily average has been climbing steadily since the site was launched at the beginning of last year.

The stats tend to be all over the place. The country-by-country table in the right sidebar must include hits to other Salut! site, because the figure that appears nearby – 61,000+ – is the one to be regarded as accurate.

We remain junior league players by comparison with Ready to Go, A Love Supreme and the official club site, among others, and see ourselves in any case as complementary, not in competition. We have healthy relationships with others, official and otherwise, with the interests of SAFC at heart (ALS, for example, permits us to use images occasionally, RTG is happy to include links to this site on its SMB and Pure Football message boards and we are more than content to contribute articles to ALS from time to time, as in the new edition out in time for today’s opening game).

But we enjoy no favours from official sources and rely entirely on the efforts of four people:

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So here we go again. After the ups, downs and constant threat of Down last season, what is in store for Sunderland AFC in 2008-2009? Pete Sixsmith starts with a party political broadcast – and makes unnecessary reference to a distressing forthcoming milestone – before getting down to the more serious business of SAFC. He sees every reason to hope for improvement on last season’s effort, but warns that our strike power remains limited……

Well, the pre-season is over and we are hours away from the opening of another season of thrills, spills and drama.

Unfortunately, I won’t be watching much this year as I have taken the advice of the Policy Exchange, have abandoned the North East and moved to a tidy little gaffe in Henley-on-Thames.

Of course, there are plenty of Liverpool and Manchester United fans here but Cameron’s mates were right: it is a better standard of living. I can drink Theakstons beer (brewed in North Yorkshire), eat a Greggs pasty (baked in Gosforth), open an account with the Co-op bank(based in Manchester) and drive around in my Nissan Qashqi (built in Sunderland).

In fact, I could live in the Deep South East and never buy anything that came from that area. I bet the brickies who built the houses didn’t come from Wokingham!

Use this as a stark reminder of what the Tories are all about. Remember Thatcher!

Now we’ve got the political satire out of the way, what about our prospects for the coming season?

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Guess how our guest writer thinks Diouf’s* day will pan out..

Back by popular request – or so we’d like to think – the series we launched midway through last season: tales from the enemy camp. For each game, we will invite a fan of the opposing side, preferably one who is witty, winsome or wise, to preview the game and answer a few questions. Liverpool at home, Saturday evening. Not a bad way to start the new season, one we should be able to enter with real hope of making the next step up – ie away from the little relegation mini-league. A couple of big new signings would certainly give us a boost ahead of a tough opening fixture from which a draw would be satisfactory, a win sublime.
Let us kick off the new series with Robert Ditcham**, a bright lad from the footballing hotbed of Alton, N Hants who now lives and works in the all-round hotbed of the UAE. Why Liverpool? A mixture, he says, of “pity and injustice”, along the way recalling the 1992 FA Cup Final, cheekily delivering a history lesson on Roker Park and predicting, for us, that satisfactory outcome and a goal and red card for the same Sunderland player…..

Sunderland Association Football Club: one of only three English clubs to win the FA Cup as a lower league side.

They did it in 1973, beating the then great Leeds United 1-0, and almost repeated the feat in 1992, but not quite.

To reach the Cup Final was remarkable in itself and the Black Cats dominated opened the scoring for Liverpool and much of the first half. But a moment of brilliance down the right wing from the spindly Steve McManaman and a famous finish from Michael Thomas, villain of 1989, put the Reds firmly in command.

We consolidated the lead when Ian Rush tucked away a loose ball following a surging run from Dean Saunders.

It was a match I remember most because of poor old Graeme Souness on the Liverpool bench. He had recently undergone triple heart bypass surgery and was under strict orders to remain calm.

The irony was that Souey was therefore restricted in his celebration of his only major success as the Liverpool manager. While Ronnie Moran was dancing a celebratory jig following the Thomas goal, Souness showed barely a flicker of emotion.

Mark Wright lifted the trophy in what was the club’s centenary year, but the Sunderland players picked up the winners’ medals, an error that was later rectified on the pitch. Wright used some particularly blue language as he lifted the FA Cup, obviously not bearing in mind who had just handed him the trophy.

But it is not the matches or the players that link the clubs as much as your old stadium Roker Park. The first match at the stadium was in 1898, a friendly against Liverpool that Sunderland won 1-0. The very last match was in May 1997 when Sunderland again played Liverpool. The home side triumphed by the same score, a goal to nil, in a fitting end to the famous stadium’s 99-year history.

Liverpool also have links to the Stadium of Light. The stadium’s highest ever attendance was when Liverpool visited in 2002. A crowd of 48,353 watched the home side win 2-1. Sunderland fans would probably sacrifice entire limbs for the same score on Saturday.

And now for Salut! Sunderland‘s questions:

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Wet, Wet, Wet. That’s how the Irish pre-season tour ended for Pete Sixsmith and assorted SAFC 24 Hour People. The black stuff appears to have offered some consolation…

We suspected something was wrong when we spied a pair of cats walking hand in hand down the street, asking all and sundry if they knew where the man who was building the big wooden boat lived.

It was a downpour of biblical proportions, entirely appropriate in a land where nuns are still widely seen and RTE broadcast the Angelus, the sound of a bell ringing, at six o’clock every night.

It had been an easy trip from Athlone thanks to Irish Railways. Cheap as well; a single ticket was 24 euros,a return 10. National Express take note! Jurys at Croke Park was excellent, although they appeared to have no trace of our bookings but the receptionist (from Poland) sorted it out with help from her colleague (from Spain).

Then, on to Bray courtesey of the DART fast train, which took the same amount of time as the slow train, because it was two minutes behind it and there were no passing places on the line. Bray is a pleasant little resort with a football team who punch above their weight. Unfortunately, neither they nor Sligo Rovers (who featured former SAFC protege Ritchie Ryan) had any concept of the word punch and we had to endure a tedious 0-0 draw.

Saturday’s forecast was dismal and at 7am the rain was lashing down. However , it had cleared by 10am and it was a warm, muggy summers day as The Famous Five (Horan, Sixsmith, Wood Major, Dobson and Wood Minor) met up in the hotel for four hours of GAA football before the clash with the Hoops.

Pete Horan and myself fell in love with the GAA last year when we attended the hurling. The football is just as good and it has the added advantage of having a ball big enough to see. We had seats close to the touchline, close enough to see the illicit punches thrown on the referee’s blindside and sat with supporters of Wexford, Armagh, Kerry and Galway all intermingling and shouting provocative slogans like “Come on now lads” and “Fair play to you, Padraig” and “Jeezuz referee, yer a fecking gobshite”. Pure Father Ted!

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Athlone. The very name takes you back to old wireless sets and the crackly stations you found on them. Cows, fields, rain – they take me back to Europe. Pete Sixsmith enjoyed the lot, and caught a decent run-out for the Lads, a few jars of stout and real ale and a chance meeting with the opposition goalie. Oh, and we won 6-0………

Another summer, another trek around the Emerald Isle. This time, a shorter journey than 2007 bringing with it the opportunity to see new towns, visit new stadiums, drink more Guinness and generally bask in the glory of being a Sunderland fan in a country that appears to have fallen quite seriously in love with us.

The journey started in Belfast with visits to three excellent bars culminating in real ale and good music in John Hewitts. A rainy walk (stagger) back to the bed factory that is The Days Inn and an early start next day for the daily bus from Belfast to Athlone.

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