Towards the end of last season, not quite a year ago so not at the very end, Burton Albion visited the Stadium of Light, won 2-1 and sent Sunderland down for the second successive season.
The fact that most of us were already resigned to relegation made it little easier to stomach and the Netflix documentary Sunderland Til I Die captured the misery in all its raw intensity.
Monsieur Salut writes: we had to bounce back from Wembley and we did, in some style as you’ll know if you were there or have read Pete Sixmsith’s rousing account of our 3-0 win.
Now another Lancashire test awaits. We need to do something similar at Rochdale on Saturday. Over to Ian Wright*, our Dale stalwart, with answers to Salut! Sunderland‘s questions. Even before the win at Stanley, he reckoned we should have enough quality to overcome any post-Wembley doldrums….
Job done at Accrington Stanley and our old friend Eric Bower won Guess the Score, correctly going for a 3-0 win to get us swiftly over any Wembley blues, or Blues for that matter.
Monsieur Salut says: Ian Reynolds-Young* was there for the washed-out first attempt to play this match. He missed Accrington Stanley’s impressive visit to the Stadium of Light but will be there again on Saturday. I hope he is right to think we will win 2-0.
Ian is the editor of the Offical Accrington Stanley Supporters’ Club (OASSC) monthly newsletter and webmaster of www.onstanleyon.com. Read on: his replies are a treat …
NB WE ARE ADDING YOUR PHOTOS IN COMMENTS BELOW AS THEY COME IN – CLICK TO ENLARGE – AND JOHN MCCORMICK HAS CREATED THE VIDEO SLIDESHOW
All of us who were there will have memories to last the rest of our lives. Send your own best photos to us – by clicking here – and we’ll find a way of publishing the best of them.
Monsieur Salut writes: Pete Sixsmith and I did it in style, lunch (nothing to write home about) and drinks in the Bobby Moore suite, seats on the halfway line. It was a great occasion and at half time, we imagined a bit of silverware was ours. Wasn’t to be. Poor Catts had an excellent game even if, as he stepped up for his penalty, I turned to the charming young Irishwoman next to me – the girlfriend of a member of our coaching staff – and said ‘that’s not a great idea’. It wasn’t.
Sixer also enjoyed his day out. We both recognised that Pompey’s second-half transformation made victory for them a deserved one. But congrats to St Joseph’s Catholic Academy from Hebburn on winning the EFL Girls’ Cup final, played before the Checkatrade game – they beat a team from Mangotsfield, Bristol 3–1 – and now on to greater things …
The trail of tears led all the way up the M1 and A1, up the East Coast Main Line and to all points South, East and West from that benighted stadium in a North London industrial estate.
Except there were no tears. There was pride in the way that the team had played in the first half, pride in the resilience they showed in coming back in the last minute of extra time and pride in the fact that a friendly invasion of London had gone off well.
John McCormick writes: Colin e-mailed to ask if I could update the phone message Rob Hutchison sent after the game and which he’d managed to put up via his mobile. It seems a long time since Malcolm and I spent a pleasant pre-Accrington lunchtime in Rob and Olivia’s company and it’s always good to hear from him. Here he is with his one-word ratings after a rather different game:
I was sweating in the last few minutes of extra time, thinking “the next goal will win it”. And then Portsmouth scored, after we had lost all of the shape and brio that marked our first half performance. But somehow we scored a second time to send the game to penalties. Which we lost.
Pete Sixsmith or one of the Salut contingent will file a report in due course. For now here’s his substitute’s (aka M Salut) post penalty seven word text:
We all know the Checkatrade, plus the international breaks and that match abandonment at Accrington Stanley, have left us with ground to make up on the other promotion contenders. A congested April (eight league games) makes a top-two place all the harder to secure. Here, Simon Carving puts the case for a bold selection choice for Sunday’s final …
Sunderland are delicately poised in fourth position in League One, five points behind second-placed Barnsley but, importantly, with two games in hand. Win those games (and a third if, as expected, Barnsley see off Coventry at home on Saturday to create an eight-point gap), and they will climb into the second automatic promotion place. Stumble and they will end up in the playoffs.
This is a special edition of Salut! Sunderland‘s ‘Who are You?’ series because Sunday will be a special day for two sets of fans supporting grand old clubs that have known better times but are both recovering from the horrors of recent seasons.
Our Pompey interviewee Steve Bone, from the Portsmouth Fans Network, freely admits he is going to Wembley because it’s the final and wouldn’t bother with any game earlier in the Checkatrade Trophy competition. That hardly makes him less passionate than the 80,000-odd others who will be there on Sunday. It’s a cup that matters when you reach the final and the EFL and Checkatrade are naturally chuffed at the idea of for once filling the national stadium …