Salut! Sunderland had to settle for text messages for the worrying updates from Pride Park. That made a change; out here in the UAE, you can usually count on seeing every game live. This time, domestic needs intervened. The last interruption to normal service had been when Dubya came to Dubai (and, more importantly, Abu Dhabi), as I explain in this article for the new edition of A Love Supreme

Whatever else he has to answer for around the world, President George W Bush has surely now gone too far. Thousands of miles from my home, even more thousands from his, he stopped me watching the Lads win.

Just now, four home wins on the trot leaves me as chuffed as any Sunderland fan. But it’s hardly been the easiest of seasons, and at the time President Bush came to town – the town in question being Abu Dhabi – the experience of seeing a SAFC victory was a distinct rarity.

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Most weeks, the view from Abu Dhabi on the latest contentious refereeing or linesman’s decision to cost Sunderland points is as quick and reliable as that from the Stadium of Light or the assorted away grounds where we have under-performed all season.

That’s because I get to see most games live, courtesy of the Showtime sports channels here. I would normally expect to know the truth of each incident very soon after it happened. I’d rather be at the game, but it’s a useful consolation prize.

Pete Sixsmith, pictured above, thinks Michael Chopra was “probably not” offside when denied a goal close to half time at Derby. I cannot shed my usual light on the matter.

On Friday, the highly efficient Sue, bar manager at the expats’ club where I see most matches, rang with bad news. “I know you like to come here to see Sunderland games, and that we are advertising Derby v Sunderland for this weekend,” she said. “Unfortunately there’s a clash of channels and we cannot show if after all.”

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What is the secret of our 1973 FA Cup triumph? What would Bob Stokoe give the Lads just before they ran out for games? Why doesn’t Paul Bracewell get the beer in? Pete Sixsmith has answers to two of those questions

Monday nights in the Sixsmith household are usually fairly routine and predictable.

Return from work, feed the cat, warm up a Ready Meal, do the ironing and then contemplate the delights of having to face a group of 16-year-old reluctant learners the next day. Occasionally, Setanta come up trumps with a game from the Premier League or the Conference but usually Monday is mundane-day.

Not this Monday. Along with and 300 other special guests (some of whom I knew – so not that special, eh), I spent a great evening in the company of Micky Horswill, Paul Bracewell, Kevin Ball, Craig Gordon and Roger Tames at a Century Radio Fans’ Night in the Stadium of Light Sports Bar.

What an entertaining evening. All four players had a fund of good stories to tell and Tames handled it superbly. Someone made the inevitable crack about Nookie Bear (for the uninitiated, Tames is a dead ringer for Roger de Courcey, aka the world’s worst ventriloquist), but he clearly knew and understood the psyche of the players and the audience.

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Pete Sixmsmith wasn’t at the Valley last night, but the text message that dropped as I slept nearly 4,000 miles away read like the first under-18s edition of Sixer’s Sevens: “Youth team won two one at Charlton.”

So Kevin Ball’s Class of ’08 are through to the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup with only Man City standing in the way of further glory. The goals came from Martyn Waghorn, pictured courtesy of A Love Supreme, and Jordan Henderson.

Salut! Sunderland once again salutes Bally and his promising squad on a stonking cup run. And thanks to my penfriends at the Blackcats forum, I can bring more news and comment from the game:

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After all the must-win home games we somehow managed to win, here comes the must-win away tie. If we cannot get three points at Derby, where can we win? Nick Britten, the tall one in the middle at the Wembley playoff final last season, counts Danny Higginbotham as a mate, but is a diehard County fan with a column on the matchday programme, The Ram. He limits his immediate hopes to avoiding Sunderland’s hard-won title of worst ever Premiership team. So guess how he thinks it will go on Saturday? A fluke home win for his “insipid, clueless and lacking in desire” team

Sunderland are annoying me. Mostly because I feel we have a huge amount in common as clubs, yet in recent times they just seem to be doing things better. When we went on a roll last season, so did Sunderland and beat us to the promotion punch.

When we looked to spend in the summer, so did Sunderland and landed our prime target, Kenwyne Jones. When we both needed to get results to keep us in with a chance of staying up, guess who won their matches?

Neither team this season is likely to have punters in Hawaii rushing to buy tickets for the 39th game, but that’s not what it’s about.

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Another away defeat, but this time Pete Sixsmith knew the script so well that even a new roof over the visitors’ end couldn’t lure him to Fratton Park to suffer in person

These away games pieces are getting easier and easier to write.

Plenty of effort, lots of huffing and puffing, no penetration and a ropey referees decision that costs us the game.

Roy comes on TV and radio and says we have to be better and that some of the players need to be more aware of things. Pundits nod sagely and the whole thing is put to bed until we win the next home game.

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Not quite ready in time for Saturday
Picture: twmiller@btinternet.com

Smug feelings about our 2-0 win over Portsmouth were still strong when Salut! Sunderland went in search of a Pompey fan to write about Saturday’s return fixture. The choices were plentiful: Peter Allen, friend and fellow journalist in Paris; Robert Hardman, another former colleague; Brian Oliver, esteemed sports editor of the UK’s best national newspaper, The Observer. But the search ended neither in Paris nor London, nor on the Hampshire coast, but – thanks to the fans’ site pompeyonline – roughly the same distance from our ground as was travelled by Carlos Edwards’s winner against Burnley. Let Equinox introduce himself and tell his own story……

“Equinox” lives in East Boldon. Yes that’s right, East Boldon, just a gnat’s wing away from your beloved SoL.

I am one of just four known Pompey fans in the North-east of England. Born and raised in Portsmouth – oh and by the way, the pronunciation is ‘Portsmth’ not ‘portsMOUTH’ but to be on the safe side call it Pompey and you’ll make friends – I have lived and worked in the North East since 1989, including a spell prosecuting at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court (as good a reason as any to use an alias!).

And why “Equinox”? Well, the equinox is the highest point the Sun reaches in its annual travels, and at the time I joined the fans’ forums on the net I was the farthest north Pompey fan we had; I was the equinox!

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Pete Sixsmith profits from a SAFC-free weekend to take in games at Ashington and Ryton, plot his book on the fate of proper old football grounds, hail Big Cec Irwin and question moves to stamp out of swearing on the pitch

Being out of the cup gives people like me a chance to get to clubs and grounds that we sometimes struggle to visit.

A couple of weeks ago on Fourth Round day, I went to Consett, once the Red Dust capital of the UK, and watched an exhilarating Vase replay against the swells and toffs of Poole Town.

No Vase replays this weekend, so it was a question of looking round for something interesting. I found a good one on the Friday night at Ashington and a not so good one on the Saturday at Ryton.

Ashington are leaving their atmospheric and evocative home of Portland Park for the usual soulless, IKEA ground on the edge of town. Asda have decided that the good citizens of Ashington need a bigger supermarket so the obvious place for expansion is the local football ground.

So, yet another old ground (used by the Colliers in their Football League days in the 1920s) becomes yet another temple of consumerism.

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Pete Sixmith, who goes to at least three games a week during the football season, witnesses one of the best at the Stadium of Light. But the players wouldn’t have been celebrating at the Glass Spider afterwards. One of them had to be up for school the next day

Those of us who trooped out of the Stadium of Light on Saturday wondering when we would next see a goal as good as Daryl Murphy’s didn’t have long to wait. Unfortunately, 96 per cent of those who whooped and hollered, as the Waterford Wizard’s cannonball thundered past Chris Kirkland were otherwise engaged on Wednesday night and missed two equally stunning efforts by Jordan Cook and Martyn Waghorn, as we overcame a stubborn and resilient Liverpool Under 18 side.

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If I collated all the goal alerts and scorelines I have received since the age of text messages began, the overall figures would probably make for fairly sorry reading.

There was the infamous, says-it-all Pete Sixsmith one from the last relegation season when we played Everton at home: “0-1. Cahill, 92 minutes.” And Joan Dawson’s refusal to stop the goals going in, again against Everton but this season at Goodison. “Is it not over yet?” I asked in one reply, from a holiday in northern India. “Afraid not,” I think she replied and it was still only six at that stage.

So it was a pleasure to wake up this morning to a string of messages from Pete at the Stadium of Light where, though I’d forgotten about it, our under-18s were playing Liverpool in the FA Youth Cup.

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