Monsieur Salut writes: roll up, roll up to place your predicted scoreline for the opening game of our return to the third tier – or to claim old prizes I somehow overlooked (one Evertonian, Bernard Walker, is in that category and will receive his I-won’t-let-this-change-me award, a mug, for correctly forecasting the dismal result of last season’s League Cup game, as soon a possible.
How does anyone get the impression they have been banned from a football stadium when they haven’t? Monsieur Salut remembers being told he was banned from a folk club in Newton Aycliffe, after comments in his folk column for the now-defunct Evening Despatch, and having to attend a hearing by the club’s committee to get the ban lifted.
With Micky Gray and Sunderland AFC, it’s a little more mystifying.
It’s been open season on Sunderland. Harry Redknapp tells Alan Brazil on TalkSport we’re the worst team in the Premier …
Sometimes people asking for plugs make Monsieur Salut cross. Sometimes he doesn’t mind a bit.
In fact, the Sunderland-supporting events host Phil Hourigan did not strictly speaking ask for one, but included M Salut as a recipient of a direct message at Twitter – @salutsunderland in case you’d like to follow – about his latest function, featuring Peter Reid and Mick(e)y Gray at Hedworth Hall, South Shields on February 6.
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 …
Michael Gray has found that when one door opens – allowing him to embark on a promising new career as a TV and radio pundit – another he wishes had closed years ago stays open, wider than ever.
As he puts it in a terrific interview in The Guardian:
“Nobody’s interested in my England caps, in me finishing seventh in the Premier League with Sunderland or Blackburn … none of the good stuff. All they want to hear about is that bloody penalty. I don’t mind that now but at the start it was one of those stories I didn’t want to talk about. But looking back, I think it marked a point where I became a stronger person and it helped get me to where I got in my career.”
So he wouldn’t necessarily thank Salut! Sunderland for repeating Stephen Worthy‘s account from the Blackcats list – except that it does add wonderfully to the folkore surrounding those momentous few seconds of a momentous day …