Sunderland Echo: a fond farewell as last page looms for the Pink

The small story to the right of page one breaks the sad news
The small story to the right of page one breaks the sad news
The newspaper is an endangered species. When Monsieur Salut was summoned to Abu Dhabi to help create The National, he was fully aware of being involved in possibly the last major newspaper launch the world would see. Under threat from electronic sources of journalism, dwindling sales and advertising and the evaporation of reader loyalty – not to mention the routine nature of attacks on press freedom – the newspaper’s days are numbered.

Pete Sixmsith takes a nostalgic look at the the football pinks, greens and whites of the past as he rues the imminent closure of Sunderland’s Football Echo, which is about to go exclusively online after outliving almost every similar UK publication …

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Bravo Sheffield, Southampton & Portsmouth: in the pink with Sunderland

Capturing happier derby days

Both Pete Sixsmith and I have revelled in nostalgia for the Saturdays that were incomplete without a) football (honest, we saw football on Saturdays) and b) the “Pink” on the way home.

For home games, that meant getting off the train in Durham and having time before the connection to Bishop Auckland to drop down into town, have coffee and a pie and buy the football paper. We hoped the Echo would come before we had to climb back up the hill; sometimes we had to make do with the Newcastle Evening Chronicle version though on a good day we could get both.

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Echoes of the past

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No meaningful football to fret about this weekend, so Colin Randall grapples with new technology and sets the GPS for an amble along memory lane …

It didn’t matter whether Brian Clough had hit a hat-trick or Jimmy Davison had “picked his spot” for a goal from the wing. After each Saturday game at Roker Park – and in those days, all games except cup relays were played on Saturdays – the routine was the same.

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