Even as I wrote last week that we would remain masters of our destiny and go up automatically provided we matched our rivals’ results, I was riddled with doubt, says Monsieur Salut.
A quick look at the fixtures at the top end of League One table showed there was no room for the least slip. Even when I saw that Coventry were ahead at Portsmouth, it seemed too much to hope that this would remain the case (if the spirit of Jimmy Hill has any influence, his old club’s two games involving us and Pompey could not have gone better).
As for Barnsley and Luton, did anyone seriously expect other than comfortable wins at Plymouth and Accrington Stanley.
Pete Sixsmith in exalted company. Tune in to BBC Newcastle to hear him with Simon Pryde, John Anderson and Marco Gabbiadini. Total Sport 5.30-7.00.
John McCormick is editing this in Liverpool, where one of the clubs could win the Champions League, not to mention the Premier League, and the other’s just put four past Manchester United. When he has finished he’ll be seeing daughter Helen and her Spurs supporting boyfriend Will off to Lime Street Station, from where they’ll get to Euston in time for Will to travel up the Northern line to a brand new state of the art stadium and a team that’s hoping to qualify for Europe without having to win the Champions League, which they could also do. Such is life outside County Durham, where a different form of reality is emerging from the ashes of a long hard season.
Pete Sixsmith – to be found on BBC Radio Newcastle’s Total Sport between 6pm and 7pm on Wednesday, ie tomorrow – picks up the story:
THIS interview, from just before our 3-1 defeat at Fratton Park in December, was among many items lost when the Salut! Sunderland site crashed. It took an expensive repair job to get back to normal but not everything was salvaged. John McCormick edited and posted the original article so what appears below – restored now more than anything because Peter Allen put a lot of thoughts into his responses and it remains a good read despite the passage of time – has been cobbled together from the e-mail exchange of questions and answers and the headline will differ from John’s.
Monsieur Salut writes:Peter Allen* was my favourite confrere among the British continent of foreign correspondents when I lived in Paris. We worked, ate and drank together, often enough finding a televised match to watch. We were even tear-gassed together, covering a student riot outside the Sorbonne. Pete is still in Paris but is a lifelong Pompey supporter. He’s seen good days and miserable days for his club. [Back in December] he thought the League One championship would be decided when our teams met near the end of the season. [That has all changed but here is how he looked forward to that first game between us this season, when Wembley for Checkatrade and maybe even the playoffs were far from our thoughts] …
John McCormick writes: It was an easy walk from our house to the railway bridge where, if you timed it right, you could be enveloped by the steam emitted from the likes of the Flying Scotsman and the Mallard as they thundered up and down the line between London and Newcastle (our thoughts never went further north). Only now, while looking for material to embellish this tale, have I found out what class of engine they were.
Pete Sixsmith, of course, knew. Is there nothing this man cannot turn his hand to?
John McCormick writes: What size crowd will turn up on Friday? It’s on TV and we’ve just lost, which will have some impact, yet it’s at the beginning of a holiday weekend and Good Friday games have always had a good turnout. And, it’s a crucial game, for both clubs.
Which hasn’t always been the case as Pete Sixsmith, looking back to some very different Roker Ends, recalls.
John McCormick writes: Pete Lynn, aka Wrinkly Pete, adds his words of wisdom to the piece I put up 24 hours ago. I almost titled this “A Quick One”, given that Pete is partial to his music and it’s quite short. However, I decided to stay with something more in keeping with Pete’s message, which comes as a timely reminder of the part we fans can play:
Tom with Zeke, his brave and, now, nearly 100 per cent heathy son
Monsieur Salut writes: Thom Bolton, our Doncaster Rovers interviewee, is a welcome visitor to the Stadium of Light for a game he has been determined all season (like so many away fans) to attend. However, he isn’t nearly as welcome as his little lad Zeke, who will be at his second away match of the season, and who, more importantly, is making a splendid recovery from cancer. Bravo, young ‘un, and stay strong. Any other theme for this introduction pales into insignificance, though Thom’s answers present another good read in the Who are You? series …
First things first, says Monsieur Salut. Laurie Kilpatrick, an excellent interviewee for our Coventry City Who are You?, was not among those in the sky blues section who decided a grand way of celebrating beating us 5-4 was to shower people below the away end with bottles and other missiles. From what I have seen in response to my pal Kevin Maguire’s tweets, proper City fans – Laurie included, as you shall see – are disgusted at the behaviour of the lowlife minority responsible (I was not there but imagine it will have been a minority and, sadly, every football team attracts its share of slugs).
But Laurie naturally enjoyed his day out as much as our supporters present (and listening or watching from near or far) detested theirs. Losing at home by a single goal when you score four seems, for all the obvious reasons, a lot worse than going down to the ‘disappointment, but it happens’ of a 0-1.
We rightly treasure the post-match accounts of our own Pete Sixsmith and Malcolm Dawson, so for those who can stomach it. let us for once take a look a gifted writer approaching a game from the opposing side.
Laurie’s match reports appear at his blog, A Lonely Season. Here, he wonders at his team’s attacking football, our defensive failings and what he found the quietness of the Stadium of Light. Leaving aside our unhappiness, it’s a fine piece of writing …
