What do you listen to during the morning drive to work or when getting ready to leave the house? Who winds you up and who, later in the day, helps you wind down?Colin Randall admits to a weakness for TalkSport – even when it talks rot …
There is a confession to make: I may be addicted to TalkSport radio. Even on days when I really must listen to Radio 4 in the car, I find some time to turn to Alan Brazil’s morning show.
Sunderland fans take heart. Since we lost at Stoke – and many, many other places since – Simon Northwood, a City fan also known as Northy* of the Rip Roaring Potters website and lead singer of Sounds of an Asylum, has altered his view of where his club will finish (132th instead of 12th) but still thinks we’ll be 11th. Sorry, pal, but we’ll need to do better than draw with you (your prediction) on Monday if that is still on the cards …
Salut! Sunderland:
You’re having another decent season, better – as I write – than ours. Explain!
It’s funny because there has been plenty of discontent throughout the support regarding the way we have been going at things but as usual Pulis and the lads are doing the business and the table doesn’t lie. I think there is plenty more to come from these boys so I expect a decent run in as well.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch this one, and settled instead for a large glass of red wine and back to back episodes of Brothers and Sisters on catch-up TV. Even though Rebecca and Justin almost split up, Kitty was diagnosed with a serious illness and Ryan was double-crossing the family business, it was less heart-rending than watching our match. Malcolm Dawson is made of sterner stuff and reports here on our latest defeat.
I don’t watch football with the analytical purist’s eye of Pete Sixsmith. I watch it from a purely emotional perspective. Which is not to say that Sixer is the Mr Spock of football supporters. Anyone who has seen him at footy will have experienced his animated side. But me? I am either jumping up and down or sat back in my seat resigned to 90+ minutes of frustration.
No one is asked to forget yet another dismal performance, costing us three more points in a match we never remotely looked like saving, let alone winning. Malcolm Dawson will be back with some thoughts on the 2-0 defeat at Everton. But I believe this deserves an airing (adapted from the version at Salut!) because Stephen “Squinny” Wilson was a passionate Sunderland fan who would have been at Goodison, or watching somewhere, had he not been murdered. To the grief of those who cared for Squinny is added the insult of having a tribute sullied by a web parasite …
Who was Stephen Wilson and who is Andrew A Sailer?
The answer to the first question is easy. Stephen, pictured (far right) with fellow Sunderland supporters at a pre-season trip to Amsterdam, was an amiable man who met an end he did not deserve. He was killed in an attack outside a pub in Bishop Auckland.
My friend Pete Sixsmith, who is seen on the extreme left of the picture, wrote an eloquent and touching tribute to him at Salut! Sunderland, entitled simply “Stephen Wilson RIP”.
After the recent blitz of posting, Salut! Sunderland – or part of its crew – is abandoning ship, or at least indulging in a little shore leave.
There may be a Carling Cup match to preoccupy fans of the Manchester clubs and even Surly Alex Ferguson. But for fans of Sunderland AFC, the only match that really matters will be taking place 34 miles or so to the west …
As responses to a shocking FA Cup exit at Portsmouth go, buying a ticket for the next game at Pompey – not even two weeks away – may seem irrational. I have just ordered mine.
As a logical approach to tonight’s Premier League tie against Everton, putting money on anything other than another Sunderland defeat might seem naive. I was toying with the idea of a fiver on the unexpected away win.
Some rival fans get stuck into Who Are You? with gusto, packing their responses with facts, opinion and humour. Barry …
Three hundred miles or so each way for a match that – allowing for hindsight – had cup exit written all over it. Or a day out to another Roker Park than the one we remember to see the other SAFC, mighty Shildon, in another cup competition. That was the choice confrontingPete Sixsmith . No contest. And be warned, Steve Bruce, this is the scale of the crisis of confidence engulfing Sunderland: Pete may even prefer Shildon away in the next round to Wigan at home in the Premier …
Commiserations to Malcolm Dawson, who got the short straw and had to pay £20 to watch defending that would have been seen as risible in a Northern League Division two game. I pulled the plum out of the basket and saw a stirring FA Vase tie at Roker Park, Stotfold.
Very well, reject is a harsh word.
But take a good look at the line-up fielded by Stoke City yesterday before the excellent 3-1 FA Cup win over Arsenal:
Thomas Sorensen, Danny Higginbotham, Robert Huth, Ryan Shawcross, Danny Collins, Glenn Whelan, Dean Whitehead, Rory Delap (Salif Diao, 85), Matthew Etherington (Danny Pugh, 90), Ricardo Fuller (Sanli Tuncay, 85), Mamady Sidibe
As Pete Sixsmith shows a worrying tendency towards part-timism by missing his second Sunderland match in a row (ok, he did report on the Reserves and Under-18s this week), his shoes are ably filled by Malcolm Dawson who enjoys his trip to an old-style ground, but not the reminders of the playground …
For nostalgia buffs such as myself, Portsmouth is a great place to go. You can locate the ground by driving randomly, spotting the floodlights towering above the tightly packed terraced housing and parking a couple of hundred yards away, only a five minute stroll from the turnstiles. The illusion continues inside the ground where the primeval urinals consisting of a concrete trough with no splash backs, necessitate a plodge through an inch or two of undefined liquid to dispose of the pre match Speckled Hen.
Although, like Villa Park and Anfield, ground regulations have meant that plastic seats have been bolted onto the old standing areas, I still half expected to see men in long white coats parading round the pitch with paper bags of monkey nuts and the smell of a hundred pipes full of Ready Rub wafting over the tightly packed hordes.
But the Ford Populars and Singer Vogues have been replaced by people carriers and four wheel drives, every third person seems to be talking into their mobile and the P.A. announcer reminds us that Fratton Park is a no smoking stadium.