If you grow up in the North East, there is a very good chance that your family will be spread around the region so that aunties, uncles, siblings, cousins and the rest end up supporting different football teams.
Pigs do fly after all. Top of the charts at the Sunderland page of newsnow.co.uk is a Newcastle United blog’s posting in which a Mag offers positive thoughts about Sunderland.
That means a lot of people have already seen it. If you haven’t, you should read on.
OK, it was only a reserve game, but it’s always nice to rub their noses in the dirt, and it’s even better when a Sun’lan’ lad rattles in an eight minute hat trick. Our man at the Stadium of Light was Pete Sixsmith, taking in his second reserve game of the day. He was wearing his new anorak.
A cold night at the unsponsored, unsullied Stadium of Light, but the cockles of the heart were warmed by Ryan Noble’s hat trick to see off a previously unbeaten Mags second string. Premier Reserve League it may be, but after our recent dismal run against the representatives of The Great Satan, it’s good to put them in their place.
He scored them in eight minutes as well. The first one was a strong shot which Jak Alnwick, brother of wannabe porn star Ben, should have saved. For the second, he picked up a rebound from the keeper who had failed to hold a strong Jordan Cook shot, but the third was an absolute cracker.
The impressive James McClean played in Michael Liddle with a very clever back heel and his through ball set Noble loose in the box and he crashed it past Alnwick to earn a standing ovation.
Another review of the week has Salut! Sunderland looking back over the past few days – and, for ruby-tinted reasons, …
War clouds may not yet be gathering in Europe, but the financial system nears meltdown. Crisis is everywhere. Recession bites deeper. Tom Watson calls Murdoch junior a mafia godfather. People starve in Africa. And which of these is the hot news in the North East? Pete Sixsmith is up on his Soapbox to fulminate …
Well, I woke up this morning and I found that the world had not come to an end.
Outside the gates of Sixsmith Towers, people made their way to work, Arriva buses ran late and the cat demanded to be fed every 40 minutes.
Were Newcastle United the last team to go down as heavily at home as Manchester United did today and still win the title?
Well that was in 1908, when we hammered the Mags even more comprehensively – 9-1 – at St James’ Park and they just shrugged it off to finish top anyway.
Things have changed in football. Surely after today’s mauling by Man City, 6-1 (going on 9-1 from what I saw of the procession of City chances following Jonny Evans’s correct sending off), United’s odds on keeping the Premier title will lengthen a bit. Probably already have.
Another of those retrospective looks, for the reader in a hurry, at what has been served up in recent days …
Breaks for internationals act a little like “slow down” signals for Salut! Sunderland.
Occasional contributors do not think of tossing anything our way. M Salut was away in Rome in any case, for a long weekend devoid of football unless you count a look round the Colisseum, a model – in terms of the building rather than original purpose – for the stadiums of today.
And for once, not even Pete Sixsmith could be trusted to return from some non-league backwater with flashes of entertaining prose. It remains to be seen whether he chooses to write about his own trip, a few days in Antwerp.
… in which an intrepid Geordie penetrates the iron defences surrounding Sunderland and presents a brave account of life behind enemy lines. And he manages it all without seeing more than the Bridges centre, a pub and a bit of the museum …
Although he supports Newcastle United, Dave Eadevic may well be a decent lad, hard-working, loyal, good company over a pint, bright even. But he also fancies himself as a writer and I am not, if truth be told, looking forward to his first book.
If you are going to compose an epic article with the title Fear and Loathing in Sunderland, and make it stretch over two parts, you really do need to have something to say, even if the forum is no more than a Toon blog, Tyne Talk.
This is the latest edition of Salut! Sunderland’s Week. Pete Sixsmith has worked his not inconsiderable backside off for us in the past seven days. Some of you clearly think he deserves some beer money; he’ll get some, once we’ve recorded our first win of the season, from the proceeds of the mugs and pens already ordered. If you feel like buying something, go to the Salut! Sunderland Shop now …
Most of us have known worse weeks to be a Sunderland supporter. Come to think of it, one 5-1 tonking at St James’ Park was much, much worse than a 1-0 defeat at home followed by our customary exit from as early a stage of the Carling Cup as we can manage.
But it has still been bad. We all know that only a win at Swansea today will restore the faith of lots of those now disaffected with Steve Bruce – and that plenty will remain disaffected even if we are three points better off by 5pm. We also know many SAFC supporters, long suffering or short, are some way short of confident that we can actually record our first win of the season. We shall see.
Don’t want anyone else to feel worse but I just read this, from the BBC report of Man Utd 3 Spurs 0, with heavy heart: “With England coach Fabio Capello an interested observer, Danny Welbeck headed in Tom Cleverley’s cross just after the hour and the young striker then produced a wonderful instinctive flick to set up a second for Anderson” …
Passion comes in different forms, even among Sunderland supporters.
For the majority, maybe the vast majority, losing to Newcastle United- above all at home – is as bad as it gets. I loathe it, too, but it does not plunge me into quite the depth of despair into which so many fall.
