No one is getting carried away. We remain eminently relegatable. But those three points were magical, especially after Howard Webb had done his best to vindicate Roy Keane’s remarks about a refereeing conspiracy against us/him. Pete Sixsmith is certainly happier than he has been of late……

As we came away from Kenilworth Road on a chilly May afternoon with that 5-0 drubbing of Luton to send us home happy, who would have thought that it would have been a chilly March afternoon before we could once again celebrate three points on foreign soil?

The Emirates Experience came and went, Goodison was an embarrassment, Old Trafford and Roy’s Return a long and distant memory as we rolled into Birmingham for our 16th attempt at claiming all three points. And we did it. We took the game to a side who are (allegedly) challenging for Europe and we beat them. Not by a fluke, not in the last minute, not by an outrageous refereeing decision in our favour (fat chance!) but by being better organised, passing the ball accurately and having forwards (note use of plural) who can and will run at defenders.

I am a bit of an admirer of the Villa. Although their fans are typical lugubrious Midlanders who would be unhappy about winning the League because it was raining when they did it, they have a real sense of history. Aston Villa v Sunderland is one of the great fixtures, first played in 1890 and a regular occurrence ever since. They stopped us from winning the Double in 1913, beat us in a League Cup Semi-final during the Big Freeze of 1963 and kept us down in 1975 by winning the last match of the season 2-0.

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As my good friend Robert Liddington, a sort of expat version of Pete Sixsmith, said before I climbed on to his new Harley-Davidson Road King Classic for a ride home from where we’d watched Sunderland win three priceless points at Villa Park:

“You know, there’s probably much more chance of riding a Harley in Abu Dhabi than there is of seeing Sunderland win.”

Robert appreciated our dogged performance, thought Andy Reid in particular had a good game and seemed pleased enough that we hung on, in the end rather comfortably, after Michael Chopra’s clinical finish to a glorious Kieran Richardson ball had put us ahead.

But he is not a Sunderland fan. There was a time when he supported Plymouth Argyle, and another when he had a boyhood flirtation with Wolves.

Out here in the Emirates, his own pleasures in life derive more from an implausible mixture of theatrical exploits and boys’ toys; he is chairman of the Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society and also drives a Hummer H2 and has a great projector that covers the wall of a spare room with images from a decent collection of music DVDs.

Picture: Stephen Lock (click on the image to get the beast in all its glory)

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Stuart Young had already been signed up when Brendan Hanrahan* offered a few Memory Man musings on Aston Villa and Sunderland for this week’s Who Are They? And though he spends his working life cutting back the word counts of verbose young reporters, he found that once he’d started, he simply couldn’t stop…….

Her name was Bethany and she asked me to take her picture while she attempted an impression of Kate Winslet in Titanic from the bow of Deck 7 of the world’s largest ocean-going liner on a star-laden night in the middle of the Atlantic.

So I did. Fate threw a Mackem hackette from the Echo and a daily newspaper editor from Devon together on the Queen Mary 2 on its way to Southampton from New York. It was a few years ago, and she was the last Sunderland supporter I met before the man who asked me to write these words.

We have time for Sunderland in Aston. You always fill your end for one thing, as do Newcastle. The same can’t be said for Middlesbrough, which is odd when you are supposed to be so passionate about your football in the North East. (I can’t recall a game in recent memory when Villa did not sell out their allocation of tickets for any competitive away match). You also make a decent noise.

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See also: Brendan Hanrahan, Villa Memory Man, on big wins, record crowds and a redoubtable Mackem lass

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When Aston Villa came to Sunderland, they relied on an atrocious refereeing decision (denying a perfectly fair last-gasp headed goal) for a point. Revenge on Saturday? Not likely, says Stuart Young, we’re in for another awayday defeat. But unlike growing numbers of pessimistic SAFC fans, Stuart* – who lives and breathes Villa and has his own website to prove it – says we’ll still stay up.
What else do we learn? That Tommy was a great disappointment, that Andy Reid could be a top man for us and that when asked about Birmingham, Stuart doesn’t initially even think about City (though he then makes up for it in style). Oh, and surely it’s the Mags he is telling to “get a grip”

Sunderland? I’ve always seen you as the smaller side up north compared with Newcastle. Yes, I know
you guys won’t like it, but that’s just how it is.

But then again the people of Sunderland are so much nicer than Geordies, who constantly seem to believe that the whole world owes them success. Come on lads you have a great support but get a grip.

I will never forget the goal he scored for us against Manchester United in the 1993 League Cup final. And then there’s the cheeky chip he scored from the penalty spot against Sheffield United. I could go on forever, it’s just a shame you guys never got to see the Yorke we did, but at the same time he’s done a great job in his midfield role for you.

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Two sources of inspiration, each concerning Sunderland fans and responses to grave illness, should divert minds briefly from our relatively unimportant preoccupation with Premier League survival.

Salut! Sunderland readers may recall a posting that recorded the death of a remarkably spirited man known as Hazey who used his blog, Dull Ramblings, to chart the battle against cancer that he finally lost just a few days after his last, typically forthright posting, in the first week of January.

Friends of Hazey, real name Graeme Kerton, were already in the process of helping him turn his far from dull ramblings into a book.

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That book, My Dark Friend is now published, and takes the form of a full collection of his blog writings, supported by photos, comments and quotes. Go to the website for the book to buy it.

Limited copies will also be available at a book launch and charity race night, entitled Remembering Graeme ‘Hazey’ Kerton and planned for the Black Cats bar at the Stadium of Light on March 29, starting a couple of hours after the final whistle in the home game against West Ham.

Book sale proceeds will be used by Graeme’s widow towards setting up an animal sanctuary, a project she and her husband had often discussed.

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Hot cross buns, church on Sunday, chocolate eggs to hunt in the garden? Not exactly. Pete Sixsmith, while sharing the hope that this weekend should bring our first away goals of 2008 (and more than Villa can score), reflects on other Easter traditions, sadly no more than a memory

It’s a disappointing Easter holiday this year. First of all, it’s the earliest it’s been since 1913, secondly the weather forecast is for cold, rain, snow and sleet and thirdly the Premier League doesn’t seem to think that Easter deserves more than one game.

In the past, Easter was when promotion or relegation was decided. It usually meant playing the same opponents twice, on the Friday and the Monday, with a Saturday game sandwiched in between.

In my first regular season, 1963-64, we played Rotherham twice, drawing at Millmoor and beating them with two George Herd goals at Roker Park in front of 56,000 which included Colin and me.

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Pete Sixsmith welcomes the praise heaped on the Lads for their spirited peformance against Chelsea, but sternly reminds us that we still lost and are now deep in trouble

Not a phrase that is used very much nowadays. In fact, the only people I have heard it from are Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army and John Major, and some might regard those two as interchangeable.

The non-buttering of parsnips came to mind as I listened to the genuine and fulsome praise that Avram Grant and John Terry threw in our direction over the weekend. Phrases like “good side”, “great support” and “they should be ok at the end of the season” are all very well, but once again we took nothing from a game and we slipped a little closer to the Great Grimpen Mire that is the Championship.

It was a good performance, of that there is no doubt. It was good enough to push a very strong Chelsea side all the way and to make Terry and Lampard, who are the heartbeat of the team, show us why they are so highly rated.

There was hardly a weak link in the side that Keane put out. Those whose training was not as intensive as the manager would have liked were not missed. O’Donovan showed real promise and clearly prefers playing up front rather than being stuck out wide where his ability to run at players is hampered by that major inconvenience known as the touchline.

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Anyone who followed my link to the Chelsea FC Blog will know Blues fans were already feeling demonised enough without Pete Sixsmith seeing the need to share cruel memories of encounters with nastier fringes of football support. Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi, Salut! Sunderland perhaps allowed itself to become so confident about the game that colleagues were invited for a meal at 7.30pm, a stupid oversight since it kicks off here at 7pm and can be seen live across town

It’s not exactly the hardest subject to write about, is it? Well about as difficult as explaining as why you don’t like Jeremy Clarkson or why George Dubya isn’t quite as good a President as FDR.

So where to start……

Let’s go back to 1967. I had been to see us at Stamford Bridge on a warm April day. As usual we had lost (1-0, I think it was) and I was heading for Brentford’s Griffin Park for an evening kick off against Workington.

As Don Coupland and I descended the escalator to the Tube, we were surrounded by a group of Chelsea bovver boys who demanded our scarves.

They grabbed Don’s, but they did not get mine. I would like to say that I fought them off and gave them a good hiding. But I didn’t. Being a coward from a very early age, I beat a hasty retreat to the bottom of the stairs while Don gave his trusty scarf over to some Steve Marriott lookalike from Surbiton.

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