Sunderland

Hull City (0) 0 Sunderland (1) 1: when winning’s not pretty

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Colin Randall descended into the matchday bunker to listen to commentary via the official club site (with occasional silences), watch here-one-second-gone-the-next streams and wait for those much more reliable text updates from Pete Sixsmith …

Georges, the fishmonger, told me after our great France-England badminton clash (I won), that during a six-month stint as a trawlerman in the UK, he caught a boat to Kingston. It soon became clear that he hadn’t sailed up the Thames but into what most people called Hull.

The way this game started, Hull City might as well have been Kingstonian FC, given the ease with which Sunderland created chances.

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Who are you? Calling all Premier League clubs

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Wigan wh hires

Before each Sunderland game, a fan of the opposing side previews the match. Sometimes it is an uphill struggle to find one supporter willing to do it; other weeks we end up with two or three and feel dutybound to use them all. Now for the limited payback: our annual awards for the best of them (and read on if you want to take part in the 2010-11 season) …

Salut! Sunderland announces its second annual Who Are You? competition, in which we honour fans of other clubs who have contributed the best answers to the questions we set ahead of each game.

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Rooting for Marseille and Le Mans amid French football scandals

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Whatever Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema and Sidney Govou did or did not get up to after tiring of all those discussions on Molière, Voltaire and Baudelaire with young Zahia Dehar, there are still football issues to decide in France …

Forget (for a moment) the sex scandal. Forget Thierry Henri’s outrageous handball against Ireland (and at least Ribery & & co have taken the heat off him ahead of South Africa).

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Hull City: an optimist’s survival plan

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hullartPhoto: K G Stone

Alan Fulcher* is a Wearside-based Hull City fan whose belief that the Tigers can stay up was shaken but not destroyed by what he calls a “bugger of a result” in Wigan v Arsenal. Salut! Sunderland‘s links with Alan began when we ran a piece (after Phil Brown’s sacking) that was essentially affectionate towards the club but which he found condescending, not least since we had little to shout about ourselves at the time. Alan was promptly invited back to preview this weekend’s game in our Who Are You? series: it’s a big match for us as we seek to put earlier woes behind us with a storming finish, but even bigger for City as they fight desperately against relegation …


Let’s start with the obvious one: what’s a bloke in Sunderland doing supporting Hull City?

Dead easy, I have lived in Washington since 1992, but was born in Kingston-Upon-Hull and lived there until 1973. Always support the team where you were born; there’s more than enough ‘Glory Hunters’ around football!

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Manchester United: a questionable stand

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manu fans


Salut! Sunderland‘s spot of innocent fun on how to keep Alan Hutton at the Stadium of Light attracted nearly three times as many people to the site as will be allowed into the away end when we play Man Utd on May 9. All because United fans like to stand. Let us weigh up the arguments …

One thing needs to be clear. I’d prefer Manchester United to win the title. But success for Chelsea is a price I will happily pay for seeing Sunderland beat United as convincingly as we are able in our final home game.

Unlike many football supporters, I do not dislike Man Utd.

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Alan Hutton: tell Spurs he’s rubbish

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Our brightest hope at full back since Mickey Gray? But can we hang on to him? Salut! Sunderland ponders the chances of securing Alan Hutton permanently …

Most Sunderland supporters who have seen anything of Alan Hutton are likely to agree that he is just the sort of player we need at the club on a permanent basis.

It has been like a breath of fresh air to see a full back so capable of getting forward and causing serious concern to opposing defences.

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Sunderland 2 Burnley 1: safety assured

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Colin Randall struggles to keep in touch one way or the other with events at the Stadium of Light, but manages to catch essential parts of an important, if not hugely impressive victory …

We started as if we might tear them apart and were left hanging on, though not deperately, at the end.

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Tony Blair and Newcastle United: when the truth hurts

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If it has begun to seem like Be Nice to Toon Week here. be assured normal service will resume once the volcanic cloud lifts. But as a footnote to the questionnaire Alastair Campbell answered for Salut! Sunderland ahead of today’s game against his beloved Burnley, he commented on a certain urban myth – dear to Mackem hearts – concerning his old boss. Colin Randall reports with heavy heart …

Some stories are true, but you wish they weren’t. Some cry out to be true but are false, even if they leave a postscript – read on – that is entertaining and plausible.

Into the second of those categories slots the belief that Tony Bair, while Prime Minister, talked wistfully in an interview of having sat as a lad in the Gallowgate end at St James’ Park, watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle United.

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Soapbox: suffering sponsors

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What’s this, a new split in the Salut! Sunderland camp? The ink’s hardly dry on Colin Randall’s piece about Sunderland’s Tombola sponsorship, essentially saying it doesn’t matter too much what appears on our shirts (assuming we cannot just return to the good old days of red and white stripes, badge and each player’s number). Now Pete Sixsmith offers his dissenting view …

Unlike Colin, I do think shirt sponsors are quite important. They often give you a flavour of what a club is about. Until the Boylesports deal, all of our sponsors had been Wearside companies – Cowies, Vaux, Vardy’s and I was unaware that Tombola were a Sunderland based company until I read about them on the club site.

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