Sunderland

Salut!’s Week: Liverpool greed, Crossan gold, Arsenal groans

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The second week of a non-football fortnight, as it has been for those who care little for internationals, has been a busy old time at Salut! Sunderland. Here is a resume for readers who do not visit the site every day, starting with something that isn’t in the headline but should be …

Jonathan Wilson is widely acclaimed as one of the best football writers around. You can read him in The Guardian, in his own books (his Brian Clough biography is due out soon) and, as of this week, Salut! Sunderland.

A truly magical piece of writing, about an unbreakable attachment to Sunderland AFC passed down from one generation to the next, appeared first at the SB Info Plus website but was reproduced here with the permission both the writer and the site. Several people who read it were, like me, deeply moved by Jonathan’s words.

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Arsenal v SAFC Soapbox: a decent performance would do

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Arsenal v Sunderland. We’ve heard from an Arsenal fan (click here if you missed it). But what exactly do we want from this traditionally difficult game? Pete Sixsmith has a modest shopping list …

On Sunday morning, the alarm clock will be set for 3.45am and I shall be waiting at Thinford Roundabout for the coach at 5.15, ready for a sleepy trip down to Ashburton Grove.

It’s a long day, we won’t get home until 10pm and there is every chance that it will be a defeat, heavy or otherwise. So, what do I want from Sunday?

* I want to walk away from Asburton Grove with my head held high after witnessing a determined and gritty Sunderland performance that makes me proud to follow one of the oldest and most distinguished clubs in Europe.

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Arsenal ‘Who are You?’: and if the Gunners went down …

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Well, when not bragging about the Salut! Sunderland exclusive – Sunderland, the play, wowing Parisian theatregoers – we were on a hunt for a Gooner. Piers Morgan haughtily turned us away last season, so we asked Mike Amos, Shildon lad but Arsenal nut (his dad was a Londoner, but then so was mine so he should still rethink his allegiances). Sadly Mike, newly retired from close on half a century at the Northern Echo, admitted he had lost touch a little with matters Arsenal. A case of “I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m Arsenal till half time”. Rupert and Monty were too busy finding each other (for those familiar with the Emirates public address system). So Mike’s son, Owen, a BBC journalist who doesn’t really think the Gunners will go down, stepped up from the bench …

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Street League and how to help Sunderland & Shields jobless

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Salut! Sunderland has been asked to give a little space to a fund-racing project bringing together the football charity Street League and the table football people Foosball UK..

Street League sets out to deliver “football and employability programmes to some of the UK’s most disadvantaged young people” and claims “countless success stories” working with 16-25 year olds who may be unemployed, not in education or training or had trouble with the courts or substance abuse.

Regular sessions for jobless young people are held at City Space in Sunderland and Temple Park leisure centre in South Shields, as well as many other parts of the North East where Sunderland supporters are less likely to be found.

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Paris, Paul Dacre and Jeff Whitley’s confessions

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Whatever the French can do, the English do better. Or just differently.

You heard earlier this week about Clément Koch’s black comedy for the Parisian stage, entitled and set in Sunderland and owing something to his observations while a student at Durham.

Since Salut! Sunderland‘s piece appeared – see here – it has been in The Times and Independent and on the Today programme – Sunderland apparently described there as being on Teesside – as well as on Ready To Go and the Newcastle pages at not606.com

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The Johnny Crossan Story (3): who was ‘brilliant’, who was ‘priceless’?

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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 …

A great pleasure it has been to bring the thoughts of Johnny Crossan to readers of Salut! Sunderland. My thanks to the many people, including those too young to have seen him play, who have visited the site to read about him. This is the final instalment.

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The Johnny Crossan Story (2): hero with ‘a wee bit venom’

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With thanks to www.therokerend.com


Where were we? This is the second part of the Johnny Crossan interview. There will be a third, coming soon, and the first can be seen here.

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 up high.

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Soapbox: Liverpool, greed and money for nothing

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Just when you thought money in football could hardly be more unfairly distributed as it is, along comes some Anfield suit with plans to make it unfairer still. At least Pete Sixsmith was able to enjoy some non-league fare and Rugby League before a new encounter with the ugly face of corporate football …

What a peaceful weekend away from the noise and commotion of the FA Premier League. I spent my Saturday afternoon watching a thrilling local derby between Shildon and Bishop Auckland, in front of a crowd of about 300, no TV cameras, a smattering of replica shirts and the ability to walk around the ground chatting to various folk while watching the game.

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The Johnny Crossan Story (1): Manchester City 0 SAFC 1

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With thanks to www.therokerend.com

To Sunderland supporters of a certain vintage, Johnny Crossan – who scored 39 times for us in 82 games between 1962 and 1965 – is something of a legend.

“Before him, all my heroes were those of my dad,” one fan, Keith Scott, was telling Pete Sixsmith at a recent (Reserves) match. “Johnny Crossan was the first who was my own.”

Salut! Sunderland‘s mission to obtain an interview with the former Northern Ireland inside forward, 46 years after he last kicked a ball at Roker Park, is a legacy of another long-in-the-tooth SAFC follower’s trip to Johnny’s home town, Stroke City (as in Derry-stroke-Londonderry, according to where you fit in the nationalist/loyalust divide).

Pete Horan had been sent to work with people at the local tax office. In his luggage on departure was a book on Crossan that Pete Sixsmith asked him to take to his sports shop and have autographed. Raising the question at work, Pete was told: “You’re in luck: come along for a spot of five-a-side tonight and you’ll meet him.”

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