John McCormick poses the questions and, clearly banishing all thought of action at the wrong end of the table, assesses the pros and cons of European qualification …
John McCormick poses the questions and, clearly banishing all thought of action at the wrong end of the table, assesses the pros and cons of European qualification …
Now this is not John McCormick at his most upbeat – not, at any rate, at the start of his review of the season so far. He’s been comparing and contrasting statistics again and what he comes up with would scare the living daylights out of most Sunderland supporters – if he hadn’t also identified a great SAFC tradition of making a nonsense, one way or the other, of the early season numbers …
Out of the Henrys who have ruled England, Henry II would have been of more interest to Stéphane Sessegnon, assuming our Sess shares Lorik Cana’s hunger for cultural and historical knowledge – Henry was born in Le Mans, Sess played there. But for John McCormick‘s lurch into English Lit territory as his prelude to the Wear-Tyne derby, Henry V’s your man. Here’s hoping for no Shakespearean tragedy cometh Sunday …
John McCormick takes another entertaining look at football history, relatively recent on this occasion as he compares the evidence of reruns of games from the early 1980s with what we see these days. The headline seemed right but is adapted from an old Battlefield Band album title and slogan (Forward to Scotland’s Past), also dating from the 80s …
Much space at Salut! Sunderland has been devoted this week to articles that I am proud to have published on this site but wish had never been written. Naturally, I refer to the impassioned, decent and – yes – angry pieces written by individual Sunderland supporters with voices worth hearing on the Hillsborough disaster and this week’s shamefully late official exoneration of the Liverpool fans who were cynically blamed for its occurrence.
John McCormick, the third Sunderland supporter to collect his thoughts and write on these pages about the agonisingly late recognition of Hillsborough truths, has a special reason to care enough to say what he thinks. Liverpool his adopted city, his children’s birthplace and the place from which friends and colleagues set off that day in 1989 to watch a game of football in Sheffield …
Salut! Sunderland readers have been served another feast of comment, analysis and trivia in the past week.
John McCormick has been giving a lot of thought to Martin O’Neill’s dealings in the transfer market and the part a study of football economics, with a title and at least one turn of phrase to make you wince, may have played in guiding his hand …
No, that isn’t the goal of John McCormick‘s career you see in the above clip, though the one he does remember from his playing days was a cracker, too. Or so he says. But what does life hold once those days come to an end? John explores the business of coming to terms with age’s reality check …
John McCormick again raises Salut! Sunderland to levels of erudition George Dixon and Monsier Salut’s other hapless teachers would have thought impossible. But it all boils down to Everton romping past us in the FA cup replay thanks not to one of those Leon Osman ‘fall over own feet and wait for Howard Webb to see the invisible foul’ routines but to crafty subsidisation of away support. Unless, of course, they were just miles better than us …