SAFCSA London branch

Why one lifelong SAFC supporter stays away. Not the reason you’d expect

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Ian Todd (source: www.weardownsouth.com)
Ian Todd (source: www.weardownsouth.com)

Ian Todd, a lifelong Sunderland supporter who moved away for university and has spent his adult life in London, has graced these pages intermittently throughout Salut! Sunderland’s nine-year life. He is the man without whom the London and SE branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association wouldn’t have been created, or at least not as early (1967) or successfully as it was. It was, until this season, unthinkable that he’d be absent from more than a handful of games. In fact, while he continues to attend home games and has already renewed his season ticket, his presence on Sunderland’s travels has become a rarity.

Here is how he explains his decision in the new edition of Wear Down South, the branch newsletter, with a footnote* from the Blackcats e-mail loop on why he gave the derby a miss. Taken together, it’s a mix of the reason you perhaps wouldn’t expect, and one you would …

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Stick-in-the-mud day recalled as Man City await Stoke or Bolton

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MudImage: Peter Burgess

FA Cup semi-finals weekend: we weren’t involved after our meek early exit. We now know Man City will be back at Wembley for the final, having beaten Man United. Bolton and Stoke battle it out – hardly the phrase now I’ve seen the 5-0 scoreline in City’s favour – today to decide who will be the pundits’ tip for losing finalists. We also have yet another Sunderland Premier defeat to try to forget, as we will in time. So while Pete Sixsmith sharpens his pen (and maybe knife) before delivering his Soapbox view on that one, let’s take another shameless dip into the archives, from the days when Salut! Sunderland had so few readers such postings were probably not seen at all. It did also appear in a matchday SAFC programme but if you missed it in either place, and have a soft spot for other people’s hard luck stories, read on. You’ll learn about a Big Match day out – our last appearance in an FA Cup semi-final, back in 2004 – that sticks nastily in the memory for some Sunderland supporters …

It is bad enough being dumped out of the FA Cup after reaching the semi-finals and a game against Millwall that we all expect to win.

But you know it’s not your day when you are then dumped in the mud near Derby – sorry, County fans, nothing personal about the location – on your way home.

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