Jake: ‘thanks to all who participate’. Click this image to see all of this seaon’s interviewsWith nominations about to close in Salut! Sunderland’s annual HAWAY awards – the prizes offered for best interviews with opposing fans over the season just ended – there is a clear front runner.
Since judging is not quite complete, and readers may still take part as previously invited simply by adding their choices in order of first-second-third in the Comments below, it would be premature to give away more.
Nominations close at midnight UK time so there is not much time left for stragglers, and we do have a quorum with votes already cast by several contributors.
This will be my final dodgy numberspost of the season. (If you haven’t seen the previous ones you can follow the link above, and/or those below). There is still a game to go, and two questions remain unanswered, but we can now look at the league table and judge how well our start of season pundits did. Their choices for the top six spots, in order of popularity were: Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Fulham, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland.
Three out of six, and wrong about the top two. Is that a “not bad” verdict or something worse?
Yesterday you might have seen how I – or rather our readers – came to select a number of clubs to follow over the course of the season. They were originally Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Fulham, Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland; Wolves,Bristol City, Cardiff, Derby and Sheffield United joined them at the end of the January transfer window.
Let’s go back to the start of the season (and don’t we wish we could).
I polled our readers as to who would make the top six. These clubs came up favourite ( in the order given) and I began tracking them and reporting on their progress from time to time:
Middlesbrough
Aston Villa
Fulham
Sheffield Wednesday
Leeds
and Sunderland
By Christmas, if not earlier, it was obvious some changes were needed.
Sixer tastes the tropical flavour of a County Durham winter as he delivers the papers
Most weeks, readers of Salut! Sunderland drop by on Friday morning to catch the latest instalment in Pete Sixsmith’s twin series, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground (if the game in question is away), Team (if it’s at the Stadium of Light).
This week, the Millwall edition was posted earlier than usual – namely at this link.
Lars Knutsen: ‘still mired in a relegation dogfight but at last showing signs of gelling’
Lars Knutsen knows how to choose them. Back from his USA exile (correcting the earlier reference, he still travels there a lot but family needs prompted him to relocate), he made it to the Bristol City game. Pete Sixsmith has already woven his familiar magic; here is an outstanding account from Lars of his own extraordinary afternoon …
John McCormick writes: There have been few “…and I was there…” games in the last couple of years, after a slew which included Wembley; four, five and six in a row; a win at Chelsea and coming back from 2-0 down at Anfield. But this match, where we played so badly for 45 minutes and returned home with a point after being 3-0 down, must be one of those games.
Pete Sixsmith then (not so long ago) … he’s a lot trimmer nowWe know who was at Ashton Gate for the great return from the dead.
Olivia Hutchison was there and her shortest of video clips, capturing the exhilaration of the away end after a composite known as OG scored his second, our third, has been repeated over and again at Twitter.
Usually, if he’s there, Rob Hutchison dictates one-word player-by-player verdicts and his daughter Olivia passes them on to us. Today, he was absent. She was there – and how she enjoyed the last few minutes of a game we once seems destined to lose by a cricket score. ‘The worst 45 minutes of football followed by the best 45 minutes of football – That’s Sunderland for you,’ she says while hardly preparing top-of-the-form marks for the players …
Monsieur Salut writes: John McCormick, setting up this week’s Sixer’s Sevens, wrote: ‘We might not be expecting a result at Ashton Gate but we should expect something from our team. Commitment, pride, maybe even a modicum of skill. And hopefully a structure that works and which will provide a framework for a climb out of the depths’
At half time, the words seemed hollow. Three down, with Sixer’s increasingly disgusted, anguished texts piling up and our poor fans singing ‘you’re not fit to wear the shirt’. Some left at the whistle for the interval. They missed an astonishing comeback, not quite to 4-3 but to 3-3. Thanks heavens for McGeady and whoever scored the own goals (sign them up, too). Nowhere near out of the wood but a point we barely expected before the game and thought an absurd proposition after 37 minutes …
