Sunderland

You want optimism; here are happy noises from the Zoo

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Predictions, predictions … everyone’s at it, with the possible exception of the young lady photographed (you’ll need to buy Zoo or go to their site, link below, if you disapprove of the tasteful crop). Us? We cannot predict whether the matches will be on, thanks to the activities of the National Association of Scummy Toe-rags and Yobs (NASTY), but we do have good feelings about the new season once it is allowed to get under way …


When we ran Luke Harvey’s upbeat piece, looking forward to the new season with unabated joy, one or two Salut! Sunderland readers warmly welcomed what one, Davey, called “a refreshing change from all the doom and gloom merchants writing here”.

Well, here is some more of the same medicine.

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Soapbox: is James McClean our new Johnny Crossan?

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The signing of a promising prospect from Derry City inspires Pete Sixsmith to reminisce about another Sunderland product of that club, the charismatic Johnny Crossan. There’s also a brilliant anecdote recalling the day another SAFC supporter was invited to play with the great man …


At a time when the opening day of the Premier League season is in doubt because of the large scale disorder that is sweeping parts of the country, it may well be no bad thing to look back to the calm and peaceful days of the 1960s when most people had an awareness of where they stood in society.

The catalyst for this piece of nostalgia is the arrival of James McClean from Derry City for the relatively modest sum of £350,000. He’s a left winger, highly regarded by both FAs on that divided island, who will with luck turn out to be as successful at Sunderland as another Derry boy, one John Albert Crossan was between 1962 and 1965.

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Luke’s World: bring on Liverpool and Newcastle. I can’t wait

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Luke Harvey, another of our regular writers, offers a hardcore enthusiast’s welcome to the return – gormless rioters permitting – of the football season …

You’ll have heard the rumours: football is back.

It doesn’t feel like very long since the season ended. For Manchester United fans I’m sure the defeat at the hands of Barcelona is still providing a dull ache somewhere within, despite the FA Community Shield victory over Man City.

But the football league is definitely back, and it will surely provide the thrills and spills as well as plenty of other assorted clichés along the way.

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How to end gamesmanship and cheating: pink mittens and goggles

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Ken Gambles*, a stalwart of the North Yorkshire branch of the Sunderland AFC Supporters’ Association, casts a whimsical eye over footballers’ habits he’d go to unusual lengths to stamp out …

Despite being a traditionalist. I amazed myself at how quickly I came to adapt to the back-pass law, penalty shoot-outs and even Sky’s razzmatazz.

There remain, however, some aspects of the game which consistently annoy and spoil enjoyment of the match – and I don’t just mean a Sunderland defeat.

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Hibernian Soapbox: a dreich day out with mime artists and casuals

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Pete Sixsmith goes to Edinburgh, inspects the Fringe programme and then sees a match that makes him question his decision to watch football and not a spot of drama. A question reinforced by grim post-match encounter with the non-attending Hibs “casuals”, desperately sad and sub-human relics of football’s dark, yob days …


What is it with our pre-season and heavy rain?

Three years ago, a downpour of biblical proportions deluged Dublin, leading to the cancellation of our game with Shamrock Rovers, two years ago the heavens opened as we arrived in Amsterdam, soaking those of us who had packed, rather than worn, waterproofs while last year we were soaked in Sinsheim prior to the Hoffenheim game.

This year, it was Scotland’s turn to turn the water on Wearside’s finest, as the rain came down in stair rods over that nation’s capital, turning Easter Road and its environs into a passable imitation of the streets of Venice at low tide. When it rains in Scotland, it does so with a vengeance, almost as if it wants to wash away the memories of Union in 1707.

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French Fancies: PSG flop good for football, allez Stee…eed

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Image: Abdullah Al-Naser

Some Salut! Sunderland readers gave encouragement to the idea of maintaining our occasional look at French football. And there’s enough Sunderland interest in Ligue 1 this season to make it worthwhile …

STOP PRESS: ST ETIENNE, without Steed who was not eligible and played for the reserves instead, beat Bordeaux 2-1 away tonight – a great start and the defeat couldn’t have happened to more deserving opposition. Steed impressed in his run-out, showing plenty of verve and enthusiasm according to the official club site, though he ended up on the losing side (2-1). And is it going to an Arles-Avignon sort of season for Patrice Carteron’s Dijon? Walloped 5-1 at home by Gyan’s old club Rennes!

The headline in Saturday morning’s Le Figaro had the whole of French football trying to play catch-up with the Man City-style flash boys of Paris Saint-Germain. PSG flaunted their new Qatari-sourced wealth by spending the ludicrous sum of €43m for Palermo’s Argentinian attacking midfielder Javier Pastore just too late to start the season last night.

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Hibernian 0 SAFC 0: the phoney war’s over, now for Liverpool

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So we end the pre-season build undefeated in Scotland and the North East, winless in Germany and Lancashire.

Without the slightest disrespect to York City, Kilmarnock, Hartlepool and Darlington, the four teams we have beaten in the friendlies, it is fair to assume Liverpool will present a somewhat tougher obstacle in the opening Premier League game at Anfield next Saturday.

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Sorry Bill, but keeping the faith is not optional

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No I do not want another relegation battle to make things interesting. No, I do not want us to employ Joey Barton or any other recovering criminal just to annoy Newcastle United. And no, I do not measure the strength of my passion for Sunderland AFC by whether we are likely to challenge for a place in European competition.

For those reasons and more, I found no common ground with Bill Taylor’s article at Salut! Sunderland whose declining enthusiasm for our club means he will revert to looking out for our results, maybe catching us on TV in Canada but not really giving a hoot from one week to the next.

Being an exile affects people in different ways. Some never truly leave their place of origin, at least not in their hearts, while others thank their lucky stars they got away and would no sooner go back permanently than jump out of a 40th floor window.

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Taylor made: Sunderland and me – is this the last kiss?

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Bill Taylor (left), with the Germany coach Joachim Low trip to Stuttgart


Yesterday saw M Salut’s old mate Bill Taylor writing in entertaining fashion at Salut! North about his first proper kiss (a form of intimacy that sounds extraordinarily outdate these days). Now for a rather more depressing tale: the return of Bill’s disenchantment with the club most readers of this site follow with limitless passion …

The editor of this blog has a lot to answer for.

Before Colin Randall brought Salut! Sunderland into existence and I started reading it, I was a very passive Mackem: a supporter more in the breach than the observance.

If there happened to be a Sunderland match on Canadian TV, I’d watch it with interest and pleasure. Or sometimes displeasure. But I’d watch.

Otherwise, I did little else than check the results every week, exult in their victories, shrug when they played a draw, curse when they got beaten. And then think no more of it for another week.

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Darlington/Hartlepool Soapbox: upbeat vibes, glowing Steed tribute

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Pete Sixsmith was indeed at both Hartlepool and Darlington – I can barely bring myself to write The Northern Echo Darlington Arena, even if I did work for that august journal in what I fondly imagine to have been its heyday – but was defeated by technology at Darlo (he’d left his phone at home). This, then, is his full account of two comfortable wins …

One game to go before the season opener at Anfield and at Sixsmith Towers there is a growing feeling of optimism for season 2011-12. The Easter Road workout will surely give the final pointers to the line up Steve Bruce will go for on August 13.

The two games this week will have given him much to think about and also much to be pleased with. Of the two, the Hartlepool one was of far more use than the trip to Darlington, with it being against a higher ranking club and with a more competitive edge.

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