Here’s a serious guest post. We all felt for Jozy Altidore when he pulled up with a hamstring injury in the USA’s first match, vs our old greedy’s Ghana team. The USA were voted Salut! Sunderland’s second team in the World Cup and Jozy’s ours, at least for now. Here Gemma Tomkinson, from the AposTherapy blog (@AposTherapy at Twitter), talks us through the injury and its implications. Brainboxes among our readers can look away; the rest of us may learn something …
Not any Brazil shirt for 13-year-old Keir Bradwell, but a harkback to 1970 – though see Mick Goulding’s comment below – that he got for offering to “roadtest” one from the Campo Retro range.
You’ve seen what Paul “Sobs” Dobson, or rather his son, made of his Belgium top. Below you’ll find Keir’s admiring review of his choice.
First off, here – with SAFC’s much appreciated co-operation – is the new away strip for 2014-2015. It will be officially released on June 27 but orders can be placed now at www.safcstore.com or at official SAFC stores at the Stadium of Light, in Debenhams, Sunderland or at The Galleries, Washington. Now on to business of our own …
QPR being what we were and threaten often enough to become again, a yo-yo club, their supporters know the drill. Burnley ones with slightly longer memories will have an idea what is coming, too. For Leicester fans, it is uncharted territory.
Yesterday we had the sanitised version: Jack Colback realises his boyhood dream, joins the club he supported as a North Tyneside lad and leaves the Stadium of Light in the knowledge that his efforts on behalf of Sunderland are warmly appreciated.
Today comes the sting in the tail.
At the time of writing, no one has yet confirmed that Jack Colback’s free transfer to Newcastle United has finally gone through. But it’s all over the internet, with the Sunderland Echo and Sky among many reporting the deal.
ESPN was sufficiently sure of the transfer happening to ask for a quick piece on players who have made the Wear-Tyne or Tyne-Wear switch, or just played for both clubs. As I said there, supporters on each side of the divide have little need of record books to rattle off a parade of names.
With just a few days left before the kickoff in Rio, Jozy Altidore’s USA continue to lead – by a substantial margin – our poll to find an honorary second country to support in the World Cup.
Of 237 votes cast last time I looked, 26 per cent had gone to the USA, with Gus Poyet’s Uruguay closest behind on 14 per cent and Belgium on 10.
Is this the beginning of the Altidore revivial? Just as you wait two hours for a bus and along come two, you wait six months for a Jozy and along come two.
Can he do it for us? Will he be around to try? So many questions. But first the goals. Here is how ABC News Radio put it
Is it possible to believe both that Ellis Short was utterly right to dismiss Paolo Di Canio when he did and that not every scathing appraisal of PDC was fair? Ken Gambles regards the merits of the sacking to be proper ground for debate but finds unjust and unpleasant the almost cliched view of the Italian as a man not quite right in the head …
The average age of our readers has probably been reduced to below 100, thanks to Hayley and Keir, and our brilliantly successful season will no doubt have brought in new readers. Or maybe not, I don’t actually have a clue except for M Salut’s recent post that the site’s had 2.4 million visitors since it opened in 2007. Whatever, it’s likely that some of those 2.4 million hits will be from the parents of football-mad kids who, struck down by World cup fever, will shortly be negotiating bedtimes and giving plaintive cries of “just a bit longer…”
Like most Sunderland supporters, I want to see new faces at the club. I want the summer to produce arrivals of men genuinely capable of improving the team, and a few more departures would be something I could live with.