First off, here – with SAFC’s much appreciated co-operation – is the new away strip for 2014-2015. It will be officially released on June 27 but orders can be placed now at www.safcstore.com or at official SAFC stores at the Stadium of Light, in Debenhams, Sunderland or at The Galleries, Washington. Now on to business of our own …
QPR being what we were and threaten often enough to become again, a yo-yo club, their supporters know the drill. Burnley ones with slightly longer memories will have an idea what is coming, too. For Leicester fans, it is uncharted territory.
Cast your minds back to the night of April 27 2007 and the closing stages of the Championship-winning season under Roy Keane. Burnley were the visitors and 44,448 were inside the Stadium of Light.,
It’s delightful to get the three points on the board as they are very important to us and it’s a great win for all of the fans who travelled down to watch us play.
We have given them something to cheer about on the way home.
Pete Sixsmith uses Sixer’s Soapbox to deliver warm eulogies to two great characters of the game who have died in the past week or so …
The death of Jimmy Adamson at the ripe old age of 82, makes me think, with some fondness, of the days when managers were not subject to the intense scrutiny that the likes of myself, Birflatt Boy, M Salut and many others put them under. How many current managers would have survived Adamson’s first months at the club?
For those too young to know or too forgetful to recall, he was appointed in December 1976, with the club in 21st position in the old First Division.
NB: A tweet by the author, coinciding with World Alzheimer’s Month, has brought this poignant and outstandingly written article a deserved new burst of interest, causing Salut! Sunderland to promote it back to the front page of the site nearly a year after it first appeared. It will stay prominently displayed for the rest of September …
I am proud to say that permission has been received for the reproduction of this quite exceptional and moving account by Jonathan Wilson*, the Sunderland-supporting Guardian sportswriter, of memories of his dad, and an exchange as death approached, that summed up the passion handed down through generations …
Last year, after my dad had died, I stayed holding his hand for about quarter of an hour and then left the nurses to it. In the hospital waiting room I made three calls. The first was to Sunderland Civic Centre to register the death. The second was to the undertakers. And the third was to The Independent to tell them that I was, after all, free to cover Sunderland v Burnley the next day.
I know a lot of people found that odd. To be honest, looking back, it seems odd to me. At the time, though, it seemed perfectly natural.
A great day out, says Pete Sixsmith, but – like the curate’s egg – only in parts …
Burnley shimmered in the summer sunshine as the crowd filed in to Turf Moor, clad in shorts and t-shirts rather than the waterproofs and overcoats that one associates with this wet and windy part of North East Lancs.
Behind the ground, Burnley III were playing Ramsbottom III in front of a decent crowd of cricket and football fans, who were no doubt appreciative of the fact that the England pace bowler James Anderson learned his trade here.
Managers cannot lose with pre-season friendlies. Win and the Lads did well. Lose and it doesn’t really matter; it’s all about fitness.
Let us hope fitness had a boost today as there was precious little to get excited about in the way of Sunderland’s performance, according to our own Pete Sixsmith.
Well, that’s the retirement malarkey over and done with. Thursday at work was an emotional day, culminating in the presentation of a framed, signed photograph of the 1973 FA Cup winning side. It is now replete on my living room wall, sandwiched between a photo of Niall Quinn and another of Marco, rolling the second goal past Fat Burridge in 1990.
The day on the Trans-Pennine Ale Trail went swimmingly. If the old maxim “A man can be judged by the quality of his friends”, then I must rank somewhere between the Dalai Lama and MK Gandhi as a truly wonderful person.
Technical issues may have prevented this smashing tribute by Jeremy Robson being as widely seen as it deserved. Ralph Coates, who died a week before Christmas after suffering a stroke, was one of the great Durham-bred footballers who made a mark away from the region. He was a man in the mould of Jimmy Armfield, grateful for the career and life his skills had given him: “When I was playing, our wages reflected the era – I was on nothing like the £30,000 a week that today’s top players can earn, but I lived comfortably and was not looking to see if I had the money to pay the next bill when it came through the post.” …
The internet provides instant access to information about any subject.
Or at least so it seems. It came as a shock at the start of the Spurs v Newcastle Utd game when there was a tribute to Ralph Coates, the former Burnley, Spurs and Orient winger who had recently departed. I hadn’t heard the sad news of Ralph’s death even though he had passed away on Dec 17, aged 64.
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