Salut! Sunderland’s HAWAYs: Watford finish top ahead of Chelsea and Bournemouth

 

The deed is done. Another series of Who are You? interviews with opposing supporters has produced winners. Read on to see who the judges chose, and why ….

 

The judges have spoken. This year’s winners of the HAWAYs – awards for the Highly Articulate Who are You? interviews conducted through each season with fans of Sunderland’s opposing clubs – are announced today.

And in clear top place is Watford-supporting Del Day, followed by Chelsea’s Ray Knight and Bournemouth’s Tom Latchem.

Salut! Sunderland is, as ever, enormously grateful to the prize sponsors – Classic Football Shirts, When Saturday Comeshttps://shop.wsc.co.uk and Art of Football, and the gallery shows appropriate products each offers – and will simply offer Del his choice of the three. Ray gets second choice, leaving Tom with the remaining prize.

If the mood holds until the end of this article, there will be a special award from Salut! Sunderland funds for another deserving contender. But the truth is, as Jake’s caption makes clear, that the strength of the Who are You? series – see the full season’s entries here – is the quality of the responses we receive from the supporters who agree to participate.

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Haway! It’s awards time again with Bournemouth, Middlesbrough, Swansea making early running

Jake: ‘with thanks to all opposing fans who participate’

Monsieur Salut introduces our annual HAWAY awards, with thanks to the supporters of all clubs played by Sunderland in league and cup this season who contributed to the series …

Cinema does it with Oscars, BAFTAs, Cannes and the rest. Pop has the Brits and Grammys. Salut! Sunderland brings you the HAWAYS, honouring the best interviews with opposing fans – the Highly Articulate Who are You? awards.

We are delighted once again to have a trio of generous sponsors. The rough-and-ready shortlist is with judges but I shall extend the process this year to allow a popular vote, using the same criteria including the fact that my suggestions are intended as no more than a guide.

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Relishing victory at Hull and time to Guess the Score vs Swansea

Peter Lynn, aka Wrinkly Pete

Monsieur Salut writes: talk about killing two birds with one stone. Peter Lynn has put away – probably smashed – the crystal ball that kept telling him we’d stay up. But he hasn’t lost the faith in an broader sense. He was at Hull and will, I imagine be at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

So read on, enjoy Wrinkly Pete’s reflections – and then guess the score in SAFC vs Swansea. Anyone can enter and the first reader to predict the correct result will eventually get a prize. Usual prizes – a suitable mug or the Nick Barnes Matchbook mini-version, either producing a small donation to the Bradley Lowery appeal fund – – and usual rules …

Ah but there is a great prize and it aids the Bradley Lowery campaign

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Premier title looks sorted but Sunderland can now affect Hull and Swansea’s fate

… through the Championship, we’re on our way

After a season devoid of impact or excitement, Sunderland are in the relatively unusual position of having a major say in who else goes down – and a glance at the odds at 10bet homepage suggests the bookies don’t expect us to stand in Swansea’s way on Saturday.

Our rare win at the weekend, with goals from Billy Jones and Jermain Defoe to beat Hull, did the Swans a power of good. But they were also doing what we used to do when we took survival battles more seriously: they won an important game of their own.

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Moyes on the Boys after Hull: ‘glad supporters could see us win’

Moyes on the boys


Monsieur Salut writes:
hard for us, hard for him to make too much of a song and dance out of a win that carries no meaning beyond some hope of not finishing bottom. But here, all the same, is what David Moyes had to say after we beat Hull City 2-0, a deserved victory though it took a great display by Jordan Pickford to keep a clean sheet …

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Sixer’s Sevens: Hull City 0-2 SAFC. Hollow victory, pride restored

Jake: ‘well knock me down with a feather’

Pete Sixsmith decided after all to go to the Hull game and you’ll see his seven-word verdict below. I imagine thousands of Sunderland supporters not even bothering how it went. At half-time, Sixer’s verdict was that we looked better organised (not a huge leap) in a poor game. Then, all of a sudden, Billy Jones came good with a great diving header. To be followed by a deserved 15th goal for Defoe, albeit offside, to produce the sort of win we could have done with a lot more often. Honeyman was good, so were Anchibe and O’Shea but Pickford had to be outstanding – and was …

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Hull City ‘Who are You?’: soft spot, heavy heart for Sunderland

Cheering from afar: Ian Wilson and a young Tiger

Ian Wilson* is the warm-hearted Hull City fan who recently chipped in with £50 for the Bradley Lowery fund. He turns out to be exiled in Sri Lanka and to have spent a lot of time at Roker Park while working in the North East. Ian expresses obviously sincere sympathy on our relegation, muses over  the players he’d take from our squad, offers cautious optimism on Hull’s survival prospects – and says David Moyes is not the man to revive Sunderland’s fortunes …

Jake: ‘like a bat out of Hull?’

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Hull vs SAFC Guess the Score: down with pride, or self-pity?

Art of Football commemorates a happier day for Sunderland supporters

 

Before we reach
this week’s business of guessing the score at Hull City on Saturday, Salut! Sunderland is delighted to be able to say that our friends at Art of Football are the first confirmed sponsors of this season’s farewell-to-the-Premier-League edition of the HAWAY (highly articulate Who are You?) awards.

These, as most readers will know, are made each season to the best interviewees among opposing fans. Monsieur Salut is roping in the usual suspects to serve as judges but if you like the series and want to have a say, drop me a line at mailto:salutsunderland@gmail.com.

Next year brings the 45th anniversary of May 5 1973, a day of which we as Sunderland supporters were – if we were already alive then – delirious as opposed to despondent. We had, of course, won the FA Cup, beating much-fancied but dirty old Leeds.

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West Brom, Watford safe. Palace, Bournemouth, Burnley relaxing, ‘Boro, Hull, Swansea sweating. Sunderland propping them up.

John McCormick: We're not bottom, so is it a Happy Christmas?
John McCormick

Another empty weekend unless you’re a groundhopper like Sixer or a local league fan like Malcolm, which means it’s time for a relegation review. With six games to go in a compressed framework and a holiday coming up this is probably the last one I’ll be able to fit in.

It has been a long and tedious season (as have been the last four apart from that trip to Wembley,  only three years ago although  it seems like a lifetime, those six wins in a row, a sequence of wins against Citeh and wins at places like Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge *[see below]) and while some of our chosen teams have reached safety we haven’t and are still awaiting a conclusion.

And according to my calculations, as if you needed them, that conclusion isn’t good for us.

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