Colin Randall writes: What more is there to say? Vito Mannone suggests the players should club together and refund the travelling support. Hmmmm. I will just repeat what I have said elsewhere: ‘The day started well. Smooth train journey from Waterloo, pints with friends at a terrific pub opposite the Isle of Wight ferry terminal, £14 off my ticket for being an old git, leisurely stroll to the ground, even a bright start from Sunderland. If I had left at 3.11pm I’d have vaguely expected to hear later that we’d got a draw or maybe even sneaked a win.’
Let Pete Sixsmith take up the sorrier story that unfolded ….
Jake: ‘Gus didn’t feel it right to show his face here!’
Colin Randall writes: there should be no surprise that non one among Salut! Sunderland‘s hardy band of helpers found the enthusiasm to publish Gus Poyet’s post-match e-mail last night. What could the man possibly say to alleviate the gloom, soothe the embarrassment, kiss the wounds better? For me, it was a grim way to resume UK life after my return from France, twice as grim as last season, when I came home to a 4-0 thumping at Swansea on Poyet’s debut as head coach. At least the QPR game, caught on a fleeting visit, was close-fought. Yesterday, as I said at Facebook, seemed to have the makings of a decent day out: easy train journey from Waterloo, pints with Sixer and others at the excellent Platform Tavern opposite the IoW ferry terminal and leisurely stroll to the ground. What could go wrong? ..
Monsieur Salut is back in the UK, will be at Southampton on Saturday and awaits a winning goal from John O’Shea, who crowned his magnificent career in international football with a last-gap equaliser for Ireland as he claimed his 100th cap against Germany. Whatever happens at St Mary’s, Salut! Sunderland salutes John’s great achievement.
Ahead of that, 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 …
This feels like a first. A few other ‘Who are You?’ interviewees have said too much is made of diving. Some of our own readers think I should stop rattling on about it. But I am not sure anyone has ever previously said it’s just part of the game and, more or less, OK. But then our Southampton fan in this week’s hot heat, Alistair Iveson*, a journalism student, doesn’t care much about his club’s stripes or colours, thinks people from the North East have silly accents and believes a Saints hero, Matt Le Tissier, has become an ‘egotistical wash-up’, Against that he’s hardly a fair weather fan – ‘I’ve always enjoyed going to watch Southampton, even when we were flailing at the bottom of the Championship’ – and Salut! Sunderland is happy to reproduce his strident views on most matters in football …
Roy Keane: a snip at the price for Sixer, see below* for an even better one
We’ve seen the headlines and, if we chose to do so, read the reports. Fergie and other Man Utd spats will grip others. We may all retain a healthy feeling of distaste at his lack of remorse for the appalling assault on Alf-Inge Haaland whatever the latter had done to displease him. The bits that we’ll find interesting concern us. Pete Sixsmith has read them. He makes no inference to that other headline, that Keano was pleased Clive Clarke had a heart attack, and with good reason: it might have been better put but he was just relieved that something he could not be blamed for would divert attention from a dreadful result. Here is Pete’s verdict on the chapters he didn’t skip …
If you came here for hard-hitting analysis, fanciful transfer speculation or earth-shattering news, you may have been led astray. There’s no football as we know it for another nine days or so and there hasn’t been a word from Salut! Sunderland’s huge army of pundits, essayists and wits. So we’re plundering the past (and, if you’re into the North East’s tragi-glorious history of coalmining and the music it inspired, take a peek at http://www.salutlive.com/2014/10/men-of-the-north-johnny-handle-and-a-classic-song-from-ed-pickford.html …
Salut! Sunderland‘s unashamed dip into the deep reservoir of past work has taken on a life of its own.
The lads at BBC Newcastle seem to have liked it, a number of readers have given thumbs-up approval (here and on social media) and, after yesterday’s reappearance of an affectionate look at Darren Williams’s Sunderland career, Darren has today “favourited” and retweeted it), electronic contact was renewed with its author, the Peterlee-born actor Joe Simpson, who famously adopted his hero Joe Bolton’s Christian name when told by Equity they couldn’t have two John Simpsons on their books.
I tweeted Joe with news that his piece had been re-posted:
@salutsunderland Hi Colin – an actors life is full of repeats and re-runs ! Good to hear from you – how’s life treating you ?
But Joe first came to Monsieur Salut’s attention when Joan Dawson, then co-ordinator of 5573, later Wear Down South, newsletter of the London and SE branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association, asked for a series of celebrity supporter interviews. he was one of those I tracked down. Read an account of this series, its hits and misses, at https://safc.blog/2009/09/a-list-or-z-list-the-celebs-who-support-sunderland/
But here is the interview, now 13 years on from original publication but one of the best the series produced, with Joe:
This nostalgia drug is addictive. Take away football for a fortnight, replace it with international yawns and the mind starts wandering back through the years.
Joe Simpson, Sunderland fan and actor (Coronation Street, the Syndicate, Emmerdale, OverBlood, Blood Warriors and much more), was born John. When the time came to join Equity, they already had one John Simpson. So he partly renamed himself in honour of one of his favourite players, Joe Bolton*. Another Sunderland man who caught the eye of John/Joe was Darren Williams.
This is a piece he wrote for us back in our earlier days, 2007 …
There’s no meaningful football to write about so let’s stick to nostalgia.
Years after those glorious days of Johnny Crossan, there was the team of Peter Reid that stormed to a record-breaking promotion, goals and points, and then finished seventh two years running. Whatever later went wrong, Reid got something right for several seasons and we were treated to the most exciting time to be a Sunderland supporter, 1973 aside, in living memory.
Eric Roy was, for a very short time, part of that excitement. It was perhaps a little late in his career to make a greater impact on the Premier League but his time at the Stadium of Light is remembered with real fondness by many. The opening goal in that 4-1 rout of Chelsea in 1999, snippets seen in the above clip, came from his superb run and then the pass to Niall Quinn. It was as heartwarming a game as I have attended in half a century of supporting Sunderland, all the more so because they’d walloped us 4-0 on the opening day, our first back in the Premier, and everyone said we were doomed.
Once again for those who missed it the first time round, when Salut! Sunderland‘s readership was much smaller, here is the result of an interview he readily gave in 2010, when manager of Nice* …
Only tiny glimpses of Johnny Crossan, from after his SAFC days, in this clip of a 4-1 home defeat of Man City by Chelsea. In one of them he acts as peacemaker after Mike Summerbee appears to stamp on Eddie McCreadie. But it has been a privilege to run the interview with him, not least because although Johnny played with Colin Bell, Mike Doyle, Summerbee and other City stars, it is his time at Sunderland that he remembers most fondly …
Just about time to wrap up the three-part interview with Johnny Crossan, reproduced from four years ago for the benefit of readers of Salut! Sunderland who missed it back then.
My thanks to the many people, including those too young to have seen him play, who have visited the site – or revisited it – to read about him. This was the final instalment as published in 2011.
Spot and click to magnify Roker Park. And then read on for the next part of a SAFC story from just a few years before that photograph was taken (1970).
The reproduction, with barely any updating, of the first part of Salut! Sunderland‘s 2011 interview with a charismatic Roker Park hero, Johnny Crossan, was well received, with positive comments here and on social media. Nick Barnes, who does such a good job with Gary Bennett of bringing matchdays to absentees and exiles with his BBC Radio Newcastle commentary – available everywhere via safc.com – liked it and so did one of his predecessors, the same station’s expert on all matters Durham County Cricket (and more besides), Martin Emmerson.
So here is Part Two (of three); remember the interview was conducted – from Ramside Hall before a retirement shindig for the Northern Echo’s Mike Amos – at the back end of Steve Bruce’s reign, before James McClean had been given his first taste of action by Martin O’Neill. There is a third, which will come soon, and I have written to Johnny in the hope of bringing the story bang up to date.
The amount of time Johnny was willing to give up for a piddling little fan site was quite astonishing. But before we resume the full sequence of questions and answers, I have something that needs a special mention.
Towards the end of a long telephone conversation from Sedgefield to Derry, I said:
I have a boyhood memory of playing in the park after school and stopping outside my own penalty box to turn and shoot a spectacular own goal high past our goalie (maybe Pete Sixsmith was there, too). At the time I imagined it as my Johnny Crossan moment. Can you see why a young boy would identify you with rebelliousness?
Johnny’s response was to laugh. And continue to laugh for some seconds before giving the answer you find below. For an old codger able to look back on a few decades, it was priceless …
Image: Peter Burgess
