Accrington Stanley

Accrington Stanley Who are You?: ‘a Sunderland occasion to relish- at the owner’s expense’

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Click Jake’s banner for links to all the Who are You? interviews this season. They’re a treat

Monsieur Salut writes: until a day or two ago, it seemed we’d have no Accrington Stanley interviewee for what would have been the return game but for the downpour that forced the abandonment in December. All attempts via e-mail contact and social media to interest obvious or possible candidates in answering our questions fell on deaf dears. With social media, you never know whether it’s ‘didn’t see it’ or ‘couldn’t be bothered to reply’; the one person contacted by e-mail at least said it just ‘wasn’t my thing’.

But I admire Stanley for all the usual ‘proper football’ reasons and especially admire the resurgence of a club that rose from the grave. It doesn’t matter that their home attendances average 2,612, ours 31,615. We’re in the same division and we’ve shown we can struggle against clubs with only a fraction of our resources. So I resolved not to make too big an issue here of this being the first club in League One to be unable to provide an interviewee.

In the event, there was no need to give it a thought. Thank heavens for Peter Leatham*, who gave a great interview before the washed-out game and agreed to answer a shorter list of questions to ensure Stanley’s place once more on these pages.

A shout-out is also in order for Andy Holt, the Stanley owner, for donating money from Sky TV rights to get fans to and from the SoL ..

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Sixer’s Accrington Stanley Sevens: abandoned at 1-1

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Jake: ‘that wasn’t in the script’

No, Pete Sixsmith is not reporting from either of the  towns of Stanley in County Durham. Nor is he reporting from the exceedingly wet town of Accrington as he has been assigned other duties for the duration (call Lapland for further information). But Salut! Sunderland‘s deputy editor Malcolm Dawson and associate editor John McCormick  made it to the Crown Ground or Wham Stadium, according to choice, and even met our much-missed one-word player ratings maestro Rob ‘I ran out of adjectives’ Hutchison and his daughter Olivia over pre-match drinks. They all saw Chris Maguire put the Lads ahead, only for Stanley to equalise and then for the ref to gaze at the skies, see yet another torrential downpour and abandon the game. All to be done again. Meanwhile, for thise following via Barnes and Benno, there was the consolation of news from Gateshead of the man of their match (2-0 up when Monsieur Salut switched off), Luke Molyneux, on loan from SAFC.

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Accrington Stanley and the Crown Ground

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‘Believe in me’

John McCormick writes: all being well I’ll be there. Given the chance, what self respecting football supporter wouldn’t go to see his team play Accrington Stanley. This is history. Proper history.

Forget your Etihads and your Emirates, your millionaires and billionaires, this is what it’s all about.

As Pete Sixsmith makes so eloquently clear

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Accrington Stanley Who are You?: ‘borrow a bigger ground? Would SAFC borrow St James’ Park?’

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Peter Leatham: ‘we lost a generation of supporters when the club folded in 1962’

Monsieur Salut writes: we are delighted to welcome Peter Leatham*, chairman of the Accrington Stanley Supporters’ Club, to this season’s classic series of Who are You? interviews. We expect other clubs at this level to raise their game when they play us, since we have ‘big club’ stamped on our foreheads. But our League One interviewees are reaching lofty standards, too. I loved Peter’s response to my suggestion that Stanley might have moved this match to a bigger ground than one holding just over 5,000 to accommodate our fans! …

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Accrington Stanley vs SAFC Guess the Score: the club that wouldn’t die

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‘Believe in me’

Pete Sixsmith, having begun his annual Santa duties, has a special gift to offer: that unwon copy of Managers, the third column of Sunderland books from Tales From the Red and Whites. Read on …

Our headline reflects the proud declaration that sits atop the home page of Accrington Stanley FC’s official website.

And many readers will be familiar with the “who are they?” mantra, as exemplified by this exchange from an old milk advertisement quoted at Wikipedia:

Boy 1 (wearing Liverpool top): “Milk! Urghh!”
Boy 2:(also wearing Liverpool top) “It’s what Ian Rush drinks.”
Boy 1: “Ian Rush?”
Boy 2: “Yeah. And he said if I didn’t drink lots of milk, when I grow up, I’ll only be good enough to play for Accrington Stanley.”
Boy 1: “Accrington Stanley, who are they?”
Boy 2: “Exactly.”

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Barnsley and Doncaster (and Accrington?) push Sunderland down and Walsall out.

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My  “how’s it going?” piece went up on Friday, as per usual over the last few international breaks, and elicited few responses, as per usual over the last few seasons. I had expected one or  two Coventry ninjas (there can’t be many more than two) to pick up the series and comment but it appears to be beyond them.

Not that it matters. One appreciative reader, Edward, made a comment  and that got me thinking, so I did a bit of fiddling with the spreadsheet and here we are.

In some ways this post is similar to Friday’s. However, there is not only an update there’s also a change of emphasis. Sunderland, of course, are the main focus but, for the first time this season, Walsall and Doncaster come into the discussion, which is something they’ve merited for a while, and I’ve also included Accrington, new entrants to the play-off spots

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Burton, Scunthorpe or Peterborough – who’ll join Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton and Portsmouth?

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UPDATE: we saw the poll had grown, improbably, to 11,000+ votes with Coventry way out in front on 26 per cent. Couldn’t blame Jimmy Hill this time but something was clearly up.  For the culprits, go to the Coventry site Sky Blues Talk    … but don’t get too cross as our lot would gladly have done the same to them. The poll, unsurprisingly, is suspended …

After Colin reposted our “who’s going up?” poll (on the left, below) in one of the Question and Answer sessions  with our owners there  was brief flurry of voting, as you might have expected given the number of visitors we had. And then things slowed down until, by the weekend, things were at a trickle, although votes were and are still coming in. Again, this was to be expected as the eyes of the football world were on Russia, where eight or nine ex-Sunderland players were taking part in the World’s most prestigious competition outside the Third Division. We now have over 800 votes cast, which is enough to be going on with, although Colin in his gut feeling poll, had almost as many when only one vote was allowed per person.

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Barnsley drop, Burton and Posh replace Luton and Scunthorpe, Walsall get off the bottom in our promotion poll.

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When I first put this poll up, a mere week ago, I wrote

“this is predominantly a Sunderland site and we aren’t claiming results are totally unbiased… …Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that SAFC  fans have not been blindly optimistic.”

After only a week I would not able to add a lot to this statement, were it not for two things. The first is that the poll was tagged to promote it to all League One fans for over 24 hours before it was promoted on our facebook page and then on Colin’s subsequent posts on this site. This gave us a small (very small, as it happens) hint of what the whole of the League One fanbase might think. The second was that Colin’s own poll closed, with some findings we can bring to bear on this one.

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The bookies say Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton, Portsmouth, Luton and Scunthorpe. What about you?

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And so we have it: the fixtures are out. You’ll be getting your fill of dates, and conjecture from all over, no doubt, and enjoying the pre-season buzz of anticipation that it brings.

But when you’re tucked up under the sheets, reading Charles Buchan’s “Football Monthly” with a torch and reality bites, do you think you’ll win League One?

Or even get promoted?

If you do, please let us know. If you don’t, let us know who you think will make the grade.

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