Monsieur Salut writes: the original intention was to combine a small tribute to a sadly departed Boro fan, who often came to these pages to wind us all up, with an appeal for votes in a football blogging awards process and a shout-out for our 2,000th follower on Twitter. In fact, Twitter will have to wait and there will be no more than a passing reference in the footnote to the awards. This posting is dedicated to the memory of the Jack Wrightson, aka Smoggie, whose final wind-up was to gloat about his day at the Stadium of Light on August 21 …
The headline was going to read: “Vote for Salut! Sunderland. Welcome our 2000th Twitter follower. RIP Middlesbrough’s Smoggie”.
But in true order of importance, the death of a welcome irritant on the pages of this site easily took priority. So rather than just re-order the heading or the text, it seemed right to concentrate on Jack Wrightson, a lifelong Middlesbrough supporter who died just a couple of days after he had watched his team beat ours at the Stadium of Light.