If there ever was a game that dreams were made of then few could argue that was it! There’s some sort of superiority/inferiority complex constantly spilling over from the personalities of Newcastle/Sunderland fans when it comes to the other. Whichever way you look at it, only more results of this nature will start to amend that, writes Stephen Goldsmith.
Elsewhere, we have made our apologies to mayfly larvae and other forms of pond life feeling insulted at comparison with the Newcastle United ‘fans’ who rampaged through the city centre after their team lost a football game, as their fathers perhaps did before them when Toon suffered reverses. Jake notes that the yobs made it on to the nine o’clock Spanish news. And Pete Sixsmith, while reporting on the Under 21s’ defeat by Blackburn Rovers, worries about the safety of any horse with a Geordie accent should results go badly this coming weekend …
No need to translate: for L’Equipe, it was ‘une victoire amplement méritée’
It is not often that a Sunderland game features so prominently in the French press. Even though the sports daily, L’Equipe, covers the Premier League reasonably well, you can guess which teams dominate their columns.
Today is different. Paolo Di Canio’s exuberant celebration of each goal at St James’ Park gets the generous illustration you see and is then described in full in the text.
The scoreline bears repeating over and again: Newcastle United 0 Sunderland 3. It was a wonderful team performance and it seems beyond belief that Alan Pardew should place such store by the wrongly disallowed Newcastle goal when Howard Webb had spared his side two, perhaps three first-half penalties, the likelihood of an early Sess goal and a sending off. It also seems beyond belief that in 2013, humanity can still find enough zero-intelligence specimens to beat up a city centre, their own city centre at that though it wouldn’t actually make it seem more civilised had their spite been vented somewhere else, because a football game has been emphatically lost. Pete Sixsmith offers the right mixture of high praise and schoolmasterly scorn …
Not for nearly half a century has there been precisely this scoreline from St James’ Park though we remember or know about the later 4-1 variation. That was Gary Rowell’s game. This was Stephane Sessegnon’s. It was a truly outstanding performance in a team display that had many very good ones. Paolo Di Canio can bound up and down the technical area as much as he wishes when celebrating events such as these. This is his verdict on a mighty and mightily important win …
This could be the day that changes history, Sunderland staying up and Pete Sixsmith keeping the faith. A magnificent performance, Sess-inspired but with great input from Simon Mignolet (added belatedly; thanks Vince, his spectator status late on fooled me), John O’Shea, Danny Rose, Adam Johnson, Danny Graham and one or two more, and it had to be so to overcome Howard Webb’s astonishing first-half lapses: three penalty shouts of which two were spot kicks beyond reasonable doubt, denial of Sess’s legitimate one-on-one with Krull and the leniency showed to Cabaye and, above all, Gouffran. This is the sort of day we live for as Sunderland supporters. Three-nil? Nine-one would not have flattered us too much …
Football in, politics out. Or is it? Paolo showed his communist side this week after suggestions were made that the players were being made to do everything together, writes Gareth Barker.
For us however, we are firmly focused on the football during this weeks podcast, as most of you will be delighted to hear and it’s part of the build up to the big one – The Tyne Wear Derby.
“The derby, is the derby, it still counts for three points, not six points. But it counts in terms of dignity, honour and pride for 2,000 games” said Paolo Di Canio this week. It feels like 2,000 games since we last won one of these encounters. Can PDC inspire us to a far too rare victory over ‘them up the road’?
‘But the book’s cheaper than a mug,’ protests Jake
Thanks to the combined forces of Twitter and ESPN, Salut! Sunderland has an Evertonian lined up for the game after the Tyne-Wear derby, plus two willing hands for next season and also a spare Mag for next season IF ….
And at ESPN I have given another outing to the story of Big Jim and the second of the 2-1 St James’ Park victories back in the dayts of Reid, Phillips and Quinn. Jim’s an American pal intrduced by me to the special nature of Sunderland beating Newcastle.
A warm welcome to readers new and old as derby day approaches. A “Who are You?” disappointment lies in store for committed tribal warriors. Our volunteer Mag is a man who sounds nothing like one. Clive Urquhart‘s family was driven from the North East by unemployment and poverty in the 1930s; they came from the right side of the Tyne, as we would see it, but carried with them the wrong allegiance. Like so many sons of North-eastern exiles, Clive embraced his father’s passion for football and also his sense of regional common purpose. He’s been known to cheer the odd Sunderland goal just as his dad made sure of being at Wembley to roar Raich Carter and his men to victory in 1937…
