Pete Sixsmith was inconsolable when Salut! Sunderland, in common with Hello! magazine, lost out to OK in the bidding war for exclusive coverage of Fabio Borini’s Tuscany wedding to Miss Erin O’Neill. Now he makes up for that disappointment, forming the official ‘welcome to the North East’ party as the happy couple plan their new life on or near Wearside. And guess what? Sixer’s recipe for happiness had Erin in stitches (see her retweet below) …
From the splendidly named Oscar Chamberlain at SAFC.com comes official confirmation of the not too well-kept secret. Fabio Borini is a Sunderland player again, and this time he’s ours rather than someone else’s on loan.
Read what we – and you – had to say about it earlier at https://safc.blog/2015/08/liverpools-fabio-borini-we-may-finally-get-our-man-a-good-idea/.
Stop Press: deal done – see new posting
Reports of Fabio Borini’s proposed return to Sunderland have a stronger look today than they ever did when a whole summer seemed to be wasted trying to bring back a player whose heart lay elsewhere.
When the Sunderland Echo says a player is attending the academy for a medical, the fee agreed with his present club, we are entitled to believe it is probably true. The story has gathered more steam as the day has proceeded.
Bill Taylor came across a nifty new BBC tool allowing fans of all Premier League teams to calculate their clubs’ performance during their lifetimes. Fellow Sunderland supporters – and others – are invited to have a go and report back any interesting findings …
There’s no evidence to support this, but George Santayana, the Spanish/American writer and philosopher, COULD have been at Wembley in 1937 to see Sunderland clobber Preston North End 3-1 in the FA Cup. Santayana was certainly in Europe at the time.
And the saying he’s most famous for could well be applied to the Black Cats and their long-suffering fans: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
For those of us who have trouble remembering what happened last week, let alone a few decades ago, the BBC’s football website has unveiled a magical new tool to jog our memories.
It’s not just Stephanie Roache with that goal, the one that won her second place in the 2014 Fifa Puskás Award and an invitation to Barack Obama’s White House St Patrick’s party. Nor is just the exceptional progress of Sunderland Ladies, against unjust official odds, to the Women’s Super League top flight.
Despite the curmudgeons who still cannot see merit in women’s football, the game is on the rise. And when you’ve seen it played well, and also seen Sunderland at Southampton, you begin to see why public perceptions have begun to change. Monsieur Salut’s daughter Nathalie Randall may not play for Sunderland or with Stephanie but her team, Old Actonians has just risen to Women’s Premier League status (SAFC Ladies are in the WSL now but were in the WPL until not long ago). Here’s her story …
We didn’t want supporters of any of the shortlisted clubs to feel left out. They were omitted from the heading of today’s earlier announcement of the start of the process for Salut! Sunderland‘s annual HAWAY awards for the opposing fans who gave us the best interviews this season. This second bite at the cherry completes the shortlist: 13 interviews, 12 clubs (there are two Man Utd nominees).
And we have our first prize sponsor lined up: our pals at the half-decent football magazine When Saturday Comes are putting up a year’s subscription, for which we are very grateful as will be its recipient. With just two more ‘Who are You?’ interviews to be published, the final results should be available soon after the season ends – with SAFC, we hope, still in the Premier League…
Salut! Sunderland announces the annual HAWAY awards for the opposing fans who gave us the best interviews this season. Only two to publish, so results should be available soon after the season ends. The first sponsorship comes from our old friends at the half-decent football magazine When Saturday Comes – a year’s subscription – for which we are very grateful …
It’s the bit that makes all the effort involved tracking down Who are You? interviewees worthwhile.
The Haway awards – made each season for the best of our Highly Articulate Who are You? features – are back.
Who approached Tuesday night thinking “we can rely on old Brucie to mess it up and do us a favour?”,Elmo will have the sort of stinker he played for us and Jordan Henderson will lead Liverpool to victory for our sake as well as theirs?
I thought my phone screen was frozen when it kept saying 1-0 every time I looked. Bruce had got his result, Elmo providing the cross from which Dawson scored the winner, and Hendo could do no more than huff and puff with the rest of a misfiring Liverpool side.
So the night ended with Hull a lot closer to safety than us. Heaven knows what Leicester will do to Chelsea tonight to make us even glummer.
As we’re not playing this weekend, I thought I’d provide some March-flavoured comment. I see it as my duty as a citizen of the European Capital of Culture (2008) to bring enlightenment to the denizens of the runners up, Newcastle-Gateshead. You’re one of them, by the way. The Angel of the North is part of Northumberland according to the opening of Robson Greens’ latest TV series, and Hadrian’s wall marks the border with Scotland according to independence referendum pundits, so anywhere up north must surely qualify as part of Newcastle-Gateshead, which are and always will be two distinct towns as far as I’m concerned.
I must include references to football, of course, which allows me to begin by saying March down here saw quite a few miserable faces following Everton’s exit from Europe and then Stevie G’s early bath, which no doubt contributed to a defeat at the hands of Liverpool’s arch arch-enemy. Ha!
With thanks to the Sunderland Ladies official site
The question is posed the other way round by Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. “Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that,” he sings. “Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags! They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating. Maddening and infuriating hags! Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
But Henry wasn’t to know how bad our men would be, and how good the Lasses are.