The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Middlesbrough, Ayresome Park and the Riverside

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Sleek Sixer …

John McCormick writes: a few of the old grounds I’ve visited are not around now – Oxford’s Manor, Maine Road, the Old Den, Boothferry Park and the Brittania spring to mind – but what is strange is that I haven’t been to any, not one, of the new grounds that replaced them.

For some reason, though, I rarely think of Ayresome Park when I’m mentally checking away trips off. But been there I have, way back in the Sixties, though in common with my other dead grounds I’ve never been to its replacement.

Pete Sixsmith has, however. In fact he’s been to both and is thus able to inform, entertain and educate us with another account from his ‘first time’ series. So pour a Double Maxim, kick your shoes off, sit back, relax and enjoy:

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Middlesbrough Who are You?: ‘if we score early, SAFC may fall apart’

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Andy Falconer: wondering whether we should all give up and follow South Shields

Who are You? may be slowly turning into a family affair. After Wrinkly Pete roped in his Bristol City-supporting nephew, Monsieur Salut does the same with the Boro-supporting part of the Randall clan (my sister has lived in Middlesbrough almost all her adult life). Andy Falconer* grew up close to Ayresome Park. He is bang up to date with comments on Simon Grayson’s saacking – risky for Sunderland, he believes – and expresses a liking for McGeady, Watmore and Catts while naturally thinking no Sunderland player could truly enhance the Boro squad. He sees a bitter scrap at the bottom for us, promotion via the playoffs for his lot …

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Middlesbrough vs Sunderland prize Guess the Score: life after Simon

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Jake: ‘Yep, it’s still a mug for the winner’

Just as Sunderland supporters were given two reasons to smile – the dismissal of Simon Grayson demanded by so many and a sudden leap to the heady heights of third bottom – a quick look at the Championship results and table showed the other sick man of North-eastern football suddenly feeling a lot more perky.

Boro’s 3-1 win at Hull City took them to just outside the playoffs and reminds us of the scale of Sunday’s task with or more likely without a new manager.

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Sixer’s Bolton Soapbox: ‘don’t kid yourselves Grayson’s swansong was a six-goal thriller’

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Jake: ‘don’t worry Sixer, you’ll be ho-ho-hoing again soon’

Poor Pete Sixsmith, enduring yet another game in which Sunderland looked every inch relegation candidates, twice trailing to and only then scraping a draw against another side looking every inch relegation candidates.

Shortly after the error-strewn match, the glaringly obvious reason for there being no post-match managerial press conference was confirmed. The men largely responsible for the Sunderland’s failings, and therefore in part responsible for the manager’s impotency in the face of a great club’s decline, had sacked Simon Grayson. Where do we go from here? In Sixer’s case, to the welcome respite of Christmas Santa duties …

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Nick Barnes: ‘what’s it like covering a normal club instead of Sunderland?’

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Nick Barnes, interviewing Grayson’s equally hapless predecessor

Monsieur Salut writes: one saving grace of supporting Sunderland from afar, whether from France or London in my case, is the need to rely on Nick Barnes and Gary Bennett‘s commentary on each game at BBC Radio Newcastle. It’s not free as it used to be but for once, that is not the club’s fault – the Football League insists that commentary via club sites should be paid-for.

Someone I follow at Twitter said last night that Benno’s moaning got him down. In my case, it’s the cause of that moaning that depresses me: the utter dross and incompetence he and Nick are required to assess. But I believe they do it, the commentary and the punditry, in style, Nick’s measured eloquence combining effectively with Benno’s footballing nous and passion for the club he captained.

Here, from a Facebook posting he has given me consent to reproduce, Nick – read more about him here – reflects on the club’s predicament and suggests we will rise again. As for when, he is less sure.

And if you read on, there’s a response from Graeme Anderson, another man who knows the joys and other emotions of reporting on Sunderland …

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Grayson sacked. But what do the masters of his misfortune plan next?

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Time to unscrew the name plate on the manager’s office door again


To no great surprise, Simon Grayson has been sacked after yet another wretched result, 3-3 at home to the Championship’s bottom club, Bolton Wanderers.

Nice guy out of his depth or decent manager with all the odds stacked against him by a basket case of a football club. Either way, Grayson is no longer Sunderland’s manager.

Having scraped two draws from two home games he said himself were important to win after the horrendous start to the season, Grayson found on Tuesday night that the patience of our absent owner and present but struggling chief executive had run out.

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Sixer’s Sevens. Three apiece as Bolton Wander past our backs at will

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Jake: ‘it’s not always pretty’

Five hundred years ago Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to a door and started a revolution against the established church.

One hundred years ago Arthur Balfour sent the 68 words to Baron Rothschild which led to a revolution in the Middle-East.

And  one minute ago, as the final whistle blew, Pete Sixsmith summed up our own need for a revolution in a simple, 7 word text.

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One last look at the Bolton match Sunderland m**t w*n

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Jake: ‘deep inside the last chance saloon’

Salut! Sunderland tends to avoid, when it has its thinking cap on, such phrases as ‘must-win game’. It has become one of the more irritating of footballing cliches, on a par with the inability of newspapers and broadcasters to abstain from referring to people who ‘cannot be named for legal reasons’, which is among the more irritating of journalistic cliches (there’s usually just the one reason, one that can easily be shared with readers).

I don’t think Micky Gray used “must-win” while I was listening to him on TalkSport this morning but the presenter, Jim White certainly did. And we know where we’ll be if we manage yet again to lose …

Here, anyway, are a few questions and answers with the Bolton fan site Burnden Aces to reciprocate its help in finding us a Who are You? candidate. I felt a bit of a fraud since my first match of this season is not until Boro at the weekend but the questions arrived too late for me to ask Pete Sixsmith, who suffers more than most, to do the honours. But like all exiled or partly exiled SAFC fans, I keep in touch as best I can, aided and abetted by Barnes and Benno and, of course, the mighty if slimmed-down Sixer …

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Sunderland vs Bolton: recreate the spirit that saw off Chelsea and Everton

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Jake: ‘one win won’t transform our season but heaven knows it’d be a nice change’

Amid all the dross that flows from sportsmen given media platforms, without or perhaps usually with the aid of ghostwriters, a refreshingly incisive summing-up of the awful decline of Sunderland AFC appears in the Sunderland Echo column of Gary Rowell.

This hero of Sunderland’s history – his proudest moment as a player for the club he also supported came with that hat-trick at St James’ Park in 1979 – needed just a couple of sentences tochart the slump since Big Sam led the side to rousing, season-saving home wins, with three goals apiece against Chelsea and then Everton.

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Bolton Wanderers Who are You?: SAFC ‘a huge club – hope you don’t go our way’

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Jake: ‘a must-what game?’

Gabe John is our young Bolton Wanderers supporter in the Who are You? interview suite (aka an e-mail exchange). He writes for Burnden Aces, with which fan site we are happy to make re-acquaintance though unhappy for the reason why … and like all supporters of teams we face at the Stadium of Light, he expects Bolton to win on Tuesday night …

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