John McCormick writes: I’m trying to remember what I was doing 25 years ago. I think I was looking around for a new job, having been knocked back in my career for being a narky get. I wasn’t really a narky get, I’d just reached the stage of having lost respect for a lot of managerial types and not caring who knew it. I could have been wrong about the year, though I did get a new job not much later.
No such doubts about what Pete Sixsmith was doing – both his daytime job and his other one as a Sunderland stalwart.
What are your best memories as a Sunderland supporter? As an exile I haven’t been to the SOL many times but I did see us win three and six times in a row, and though I was at Wembley in 1973 the semifinal is more lodged in my memory. That’s four games, to which I can add a win against the odds at Goodison when Danny bloody Graham scored.
Pete Sixsmith has been to so many more games he must have so many more good memories. Today he focuses on one game that really mattered:
Jake: ´Pompey yet again – but by far the most important of the five times we’ve met this season’
Talk about doing it the hard way.
We knew the playoffs would be tough and that is how it is turning out, at least for us.
To no great surprise, we take a narrow lead to Portsmouth while Charlton grabbed a straightforward 2-1 win at Doncaster – forget the away goals, or absence of them, since these do not count in the EFL playoffs – and the finalists will be known by the end of this week. Our game is first up, on Thursday night, with Charlton completing what ought to be a formality 24 hours later.
A moral victory as well as an actual one, will that single goal be enough? That’s not a question I’m going to answer here as I don’t want to jinx a team that had more than enough bad luck in the first leg. It must be said the first 20 minutes were not good, but then we grew into the game and were dominant until an excellent substitution by Jack Ross was negated by a very poor refereeing deision
Pete Sixsmith will be doing a full report in due course, unless Malcolm subs for him, and will no doubt fulminate at length on that decision. For now he has but seven words with which to describe the game
Pete Sixsmith picks up our playoff saga and looks back to a season that left us feeling flat and deflated because of the way it ended. More of this next time, this is just the starter.
John McCormick writes: I had a taxi booked for this morning. It arrived late. Apparently, there were fewer on the road than usual and those that were there were being driven by Evertonians. It would have been a fine night in the city centre.
All this season and last, Pete Sixsmith has brought us his twin series of reminiscences recalling the first time he visited the homes of upcoming opponents or the first time he saw them on be that on Wearside at Roker Park or the Stadium of Light, or occasionally at places like Darlington or Hartlepool.
Before he started on this epistle from the past he had this to say on last night’s game at Anfield.
My seven-word verdict on last night’s Champions League turnaround would have been: Bottled it and beaten by Farringdon’s finest.
I rarely watch games on television – and never when Robbie Savage is “summarising”- but I did watch this one and revelled in a wonderful team performance by Liverpool. At the head of it was our former player, Jordan Henderson, who never stopped running and tackling, who set up the opening goal for Origi and who was a fine captain deserving of all the success that is coming his way. I’m not a great lover of the club or some of its self-satisfied fans, but I do like Jurgen Klopp.
Monsieur Salut writes: today’s post – snail mail and electronic – brought two messages from people called Bill. By proper post, from Sunderland, came a new album, Wonderful Fairy Tale, by one Bill – short for Belinda – Jones to which I am hugely looking forward to listening, not least because it cost her £2.60 to send it. Then came an uplifting piece on Sunderland AFC and how the playoffs look to a long-exiled Mackem with solid Wearside roots and a Bishop Auckland youth. Bill/Belinda is for another time and place, the somewhat neglected Salut! Live site. Here, conjured up on a flight home to Toronto (not the one near Bishop) from Seville is Bill Taylor’s slice of optimism …
We’ve had our own last game celebrations and it would be churlish to deny Southend theirs today. In a game that lacked quality they deserved as much as Sunderland and on this showing they’ll have a chance to repeat this feat next season.
Yet, I feel the team that started today won’t be the one Jack Ross puts out in our next game. At least, I hope not, because this was a shadow of what I saw on the opening day. Drive, passion, creativity all seem to have gone.
Pete Sixsmith has seven words to explain today. We might only need the first two:
There are people who go onto websites and blogs in order to vent their spleen, or give abuse from behind the anonymity of the internet. Not on this website. They come to experience quality.
I haven’t been keeping count but we’ve had two seasons, home and away, and various cups. I’d be surprised if this series comprised less than a hundred posts, and haven’t they been invariably good?
Take a bow, Pete Sixsmith, and a well-deserved rest as we bring your journey to a close.
Some of us expect to win just because we are one of the most successful English clubs of all time. Some of us forget too easily that we haven’t been successful for a long time. Some of us should know better.
Pete Lynn, aka Wrinkly Pete, does. “Can you put this up before Southend?” he asked, so we did.
Would that everything SAFC related was as easy
What are your best memories as a Sunderland supporter? As an exile I haven’t been to the SOL many times but I did see us win three and six times in a row, and though I was at Wembley in 1973 the semifinal is more lodged in my memory. That’s four games, to which I can add a win against the odds at Goodison when Danny bloody Graham scored.
A moral victory as well as an actual one, will that single goal be enough? That’s not a question I’m going to answer here as I don’t want to jinx a team that had more than enough bad luck in the first leg. It must be said the first 20 minutes were not good, but then we grew into the game and were dominant until an excellent substitution by Jack Ross was negated by a very poor refereeing deision
Pete Sixsmith picks up our playoff saga and looks back to a season that left us feeling flat and deflated because of the way it ended. More of this next time, this is just the starter.
There are people who go onto websites and blogs in order to vent their spleen, or give abuse from behind the anonymity of the internet. Not on this website. They come to experience quality.
