Olivia Hutchison was there and her shortest of video clips, capturing the exhilaration of the away end after a composite known as OG scored his second, our third, has been repeated over and again at Twitter.
@livvhutchison SCENES from away end at the equaliser. @RokerReport @salutsunderland pic.twitter.com/slM7zLJzzc
— Rob Hutchison (@RobHSafc) February 10, 2018
Whatever our feelings as yet another Sunderland horror show is staged (NB: thoroughly mitigated by an astonishing second-half fightback at Ashton Gate bringing us a 3-3 draw), it would be criminal not to offer a tribute to Liam Miller, who has died at the cruelly young age of 36 from pancreatic cancer.
Late Update. Monsieur Salut says: Barnes and Benno both said no one could have seen it coming. My own concluding line to this piece was tongue in cheek. But the unthinkable happened: we came back to draw. Still a shambles at times – SAFC could have been six down before the first of ours went in, but what a fightback …
Salut! Sunderland rarely posts during games. There should be no point. One up or down, even two, drawing … things can change.
But with us, you know one down almost certainly means defeat. Two equals certain defeat. Three before half time? As poor Pete Sixsmith put it in a text from Ashton Gate: “Disgraceful.”
@livvhutchison SCENES from away end at the equaliser. @RokerReport @salutsunderland pic.twitter.com/slM7zLJzzc
— Rob Hutchison (@RobHSafc) February 10, 2018
Monsieur Salut writes: I think we’d rather like to keep the Stadium of Light. Answers on a postcard, please, re the unexpected interest in Billy Jones. We met Phil Clarke before the home game, another of those best forgotten afternoons at the Stadium of Light. Phil naturally had a great day out, checking his family’s solid Wearside roots – he is the nephew of our own Pete Lynn (Wrinkly Pete). No other Bristol City fan responded to our feelers for the return game, so Phil updates us with thoughts on the Robins’ excellent cup run and what continues to be a good, promotion-chasing season in the league … but does he realise just how much our Billy might cost his club? …
Ken Gambles makes a welcome return to writing action with some thoughts he wish he didn’t feel the need to express …
Monsieur Salut: would I have taken survival last season, would I take survival this season, if it depended on a blatant act of cheating by a Sunderland player? Easy to say no when, in the heart, you might mean yes, maybe or depends. But I’ll stick to my guns and say no. And whatever individual fans feel about matters affecting their teams, football as a sport should rise above natural human instincts to win at whatever cost …
A realistic breath of fresh air or a deplorable attempt to defend the indefensible? That appears to be our choice as we assess the Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino’s efforts to shrug off diving as unimportant.
Salut! Sunderland has never sat on the fence. Diving is cheating. It should have no place in the game. Perpetrators ought to be boiled in oil or, if medieval punishments are out of fashion, suspended for three or more games. When a Sunderland player dives, as Dele Alil does so often for Spurs, we make no attempt to defend or excuse.
Monsieur Salut writes: no one at ESPN will mind, I am sure, if I repeat an example of my own work for them to mark the anniversary of the Munich air crash that inflicted such terrible losses on Manchester United’s Busby Babes, and the journalistic talent of their city, 60 years ago today. This is how I remembered it in a piece published before a SAFC-Man Utd match five years ago. There will be small changes to make it more relevant to our supporters or update the text, which necessarily applied to the game I was previewing for ESPN. Sunderland were still in the Premier League and the article as it originally appeared would therefore seem a little outdated …
Monsieur Salut writes: this is really the new instalment of Guess the Score. Enter below the scoreline you expect, hope or fear at Ashton Gate on Saturday. If you are first with the correct result, you will win a prize though you must have a UK delivery address to receive it. Ha’way the Lads and all that but forgive me if there seems very little else worth saying about a game most of us probably have uneasy feelings about while hoping for the best …
Yes, I got angry at the weekend and directed some of my anger at our absent, reluctant owner. Yes, he has plenty to answer for.
One crass comment in his tame, underarm bowling sort of interview with the official club site in November particularly annoyed me. He complained that anything that appeared in the media about him was based on speculation or invention because “I don’t talk to the press”.
Monsieur Salut writes: I asked Pete Sixsmith to cast a critical eye over the ins and outs now that the transfer window has slammed shut – shattered? – on us. I did not expect to find him absent from duty running in sheer joy up and down Busty Bank (which takes the envious souls of South Church up to Shildon). I didn’t fear we’d need to drag him from celebration drinks at whatever they call the Surtees or Red Lion these days, shouting all the while in praise of our saviours Ellis Short and Martin Bain. I sort of expected the cool, measured, underwhelmed appraisal that follows …
Monsieur Salut writes: on Twitter, where we found him, he goes by the name of ITFC COYB. Darren Elmy* is a Glasgow-based Ipswich Town fan who would normally have been at Saturday’s game as he loves visiting Sunderland and has Mackem family connections. Unfortunately he cannot make it but we do have his thoughts on both clubs and the match.
Darren’s a professional gambler; we hope he loses any stake he places on his predicted scoreline – 1-1 – but hammers the bookies if he hedges his bets with money on an emphatic home win …