During the lull between seasons, where we peer through the mucky glass of the transfer window via the various speculations …
Once again, a series of Salut! Sunderland end of season reviews has inspired our writers to show remarkable powers of analysis, foresight and wit. Pete Sixsmith opened the series, with his brief jottings for The Observer, and will close it with his broader, post-Advocaat view. For the penultimate instalment, our deputy editor Malcolm Dawson cries out for consistency, progress and, above all, some football he can actually enjoy watching …
Malcolm Dawson is of pre-Premiership pre-Sky vintage. He remembers a time when teams like Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Derby …
Can we shoot ourselves in both feet each week and still taste salvation again? All the teams around us except Villa seem to be losing and QPR kept up the process when the only Premier League game of the day saw them squander the remaining game in hand, losing 2-1 to Spurs. Pete Sixsmith relished the weekend off from watching Sunderland, took himself off to Tadcaster with Malcolm Dawson and got back home in time to see our next opponents keep up their winning sequence …
Every so often, a noble cause brings opposing sets of supporters together and Saturday’s game against WBA offers a chance for one such display of solidarity. This is a slightly updated version of the posting contributed by Salut! Sunderland’s deputy editor Malcolm Dawson and which, we are pleased to report, has been seen by Jeff Astle’s family …
When I was a kid I watched the FA Cup Final on TV religiously. It was virtually the only live televised football available to those of us growing up in the fifties and sixties.
For technical reasons, this posting has been superseded by the following: https://safc.blog/2015/02/still-seeking-justice-for-jeff-as-west-bromwich-albion-visit-sunderland/ where any further comments should be added …
Malcolm Dawson writes……When I was a kid I watched the FA Cup Final on TV religiously. It was virtually the only live televised football available to those of us growing up in the fifties and sixties.
Years later I could still have told you every result and every goalscorer between 1959 and 1978, but I’m not so sure I could now.
Malcolm Dawson writes…..the past few days have been a hectic time for our star reporter, Pete Sixsmith. Having been at the Shildon v Stranraer pre-season friendly, endured a soaking at Bishop Auckland, sunned himself at cricket in Scarborough, taken in a grand tour of Yorkshire mill towns by rail and then on to Carlisle for the first of back to back warm up games, last night’s visit to Hartlepool has left him exhausted.
This bright sunny Thursday morning sees him lying supine on the red velvet chaise longue at Sixsmith Towers with his copy of The Kenneth Horne Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and a DVD of The Hundred Greatest Moments from the North Dorset and South Wiltshire Combination Alliance League – Reserves Division to get him through the day. That and ever attentive butler Pardew, who keeps our sage’s glass of Dent Brewery “Owd Tup” topped up and regularly supplies him with morsels of Taylor’s pork pie.
So it falls to me to give the eye-witness view of events at Victoria Park last night and very interesting it was too ..
Malcolm Dawson writes…unlike Saturday today was a scorcher until we got to Monkey Hanging country that is, where it was …
Malcolm Dawson, Salut! Sunderland‘s deputy editor, reaches a milestone of his life with some heartfelt thoughts on the way football – its teams, players, owners and even clubs’ names – has changed. How, he wonders, will young supporters of the modern age look back on the game when they, too, enter their 60s? …
Monsieur Salut writes: the series is here. I know I said at Salut! Sunderland, and at ESPN, that it would wait until after the final game. But that was because the two contributions I’d so far received were negative, one more than the other. It did not seem right, after so astonishing an escape won on merit, to precede what is now a relaxed end-of-season party with gloomy recriminations about what went on before. Salut! Sunderland‘s erudite deputy editor, Malcolm Dawson, has changed my mind. His piece is realistic but upbeat, difficult as any Sunderland fan could be the latter about events from August to mid-April apart from the cup runs and derby wins.
There’s plenty of room for criticism and the next instalment will prove it. But for now, the last game still awaited, let us hear how Malcolm approached the season’s denouement …