That description came not from a blinkered Sunderland fan but, or so it is said, the Newcastle United dressing room. Salut! Sunderland applauds a straining-to-be-fair-but-honest appraisal of Joey Barton …
No one living outside the strangely mixed mind of the Newcastle United midfielder truly knows the answer to the question posed in the headline.
The countdown begins. But to what? Pete Sixsmith ponders on the big match. Is that a hint of optimism I detect? …
The day is nearly upon us. The day that we look for first in the fixture list when it comes out. The day that usually comes in October or February. And it’s happening tomorrow… August 20, second game of the season, first home game for us, first away game for them.
It was Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Cranberries, who offered the elegant thought the opinions are like a*******s since everyone has one. I am sure others have said the same or similar.
But as we approach the first of this season’s derby games with Newcastle United, here is a selection of opinions I have spotted here, at Blackcats or elsewhere, alternating Mackem and Mag words of wisdom …
A few of the Newcastle United supporters who have come here this week have made the claim, in different ways, that Sunderland fans care that much more about Newcastle United than vice versa.
Mrs Logic
It is debatable whether this is really the case, but when you look at this paragraph from the BBC website, repeating a fact that is hardly unknown to most passionate SAFC or NUFC supporters, you begin to realise why we care an awful lot:
Sunderland have only won on two of the last 21 occasions they’ve hosted their rivals since 1967, with Kieran Richardson’s rocket of a free-kick three years ago bringing their only win in nine played at the Stadium of Light.
The story of Isaac Moore (“Ike”) McGorian, who played for Sunderland AFC in the 1920s, first appeared here earlier this month under the headline Isaac ‘Jack’ McGorian: echoes of Bardsley from the Roaring Twenties
Salut! Sunderland’s article drew a heartwarming response from members of his family, who also provided the photographs and much of the detail that enabled me to prepare it. Bill Richardson, a Sunderland supporter long exiled in Africa, was the spur: his comment on an e-mail forum had set the ball rolling.
But Bill also has something to answer for: what bemused his colleague, Lilian Martin, the player’s younger daughter, about my report was the use of Jack as her father’s nickname. He had never been known as such, she said. A daughter, you may well say, ought to know.
Indeed, the reference book mentioned in my report confirms this, giving the name as Isaac Moore (“Ike”) McGorian. his later career included stints at Notts County – whose supporters might find this item on Les Bradd of interest, too – and Carlisle United (their fans will most certainly wish to avoid this story).
So this is an attempt both to set the record straight and bring to wider attention the responses received to the original posting, which now follows …
Michael Hudson* is the man behind the Accidental Groundhopper blog on non-league football and also our guest Mag ahead of Saturday’s game. And he is already a contributor to Salut! Sunderland. Before his excitable co-supporters cry treason, let it be said that his scholarly but also entertaining piece on the first Wear-Tyne derby – 1644, reputedly a narrow Sunderland win – appeared at our request. Today, he talks of Mike Ashley’s mixture of sense and nonsense, the despair he’d feel if Newcastle were taken over by super-rich owners and his belief that the battle between Cattermole and Tiote could decide the match …
You promised to be a model of politeness unless I asked about Mike Ashley. Sorry, but what do you really think about him?
Firstly, you have to put Ashley into his proper context. Newcastle United have rarely, if ever, been a properly run football club and Ashley’s no worse than Shepherd, McKeag or, back in my dad’s youth, Lord Westwood. I actually think Ashley has some sensible ideas – ending the ruinous expense on the likes of Michael Owen, for instance, or this season’s introduction £100 season tickets for under-16s, but, overall, I don’t think he understands enough about the way football works to run a club effectively. The fact he bought Newcastle without bothering to do due diligence tells you everything you need to know.
STOP PRESS: Two Albion supporters have now come forward. Fatboy Slim’s response is awaited, but otherwise we have enough to be going on with! Thanks …
Salut! Sunderland needs a seasider who fits any part of the description in the headline.
Yesterday’s harmless piece of fun had our neighbours foaming at the mouths, most of them spectacularly missing the point that the writer, Pete Sixsmith, was quoting words written by someone else (though amid all the charges of “drivel”, “boring”, “gash” and “*****”, one lad did nobly own up to knowing who Sandy Denny was). But derby week being what it is, the banter must go on …
Even the leader of Newcastle’s care-in-the-community brigade now admits he was wrong to call Gervinho a cheat, however much the Arsenal player made of the contact he received in the United penalty box.
Courtsey of Yahoo, Salut! Sunderland has been chosen to invite fans from across the two-rivers divide to try their luck in a competition with an unusual prize …
All the silly banter – and yes, it goes both ways – shown in the previous posting cannot disguise the fact that for all our differences, especially with regard to how we see ourselves in the footballing hierarchy, Sunderland and Newcastle supporters have plenty in common.
Right, there’s a great Newcastle United “Who Are You?’ on its way and we may even devote a piece to Joey Barton, whose hopes of reinventing himself as a philosophical and well-read reformed thug have suffered recent setbacks. For now, Pete Sixsmith dips into a work of contemporary literature Joey, too busy exploring Song of the Day at Salut! Live, may not yet have reached …
Due to the appalling weather we have had this “summer”, my reading output has increased considerably.
Unlike Joey Barton, I have resisted the temptations of Nietzsche and Orwell and stuck to more humble fare, one of which is an excellent tome by Matthew Norman called You Cannot Be Serious.
The second title is The 101 Most Infuriating Things In Sport and Norman looks at er, 101 things in sport that really annoy him, ranging from Tim Henman’s parents , the Offside Rule in Rugby Union and Alan Green.
No doubt had he been writing it now, Peter Allis (“the Socrates of snug bar philosophy”) would have been relegated from the No 1 spot by the burglar-foiling, Gervinho-pulling Twitter merchant known as Joey B.
Mrs Logic
James Boyes
Mrs Logic in whimsical mood