Sunderland

‘The wreckage of Sunderland’. QPR site’s questions, our responses

by
Jake: ‘the first to tell us which match this old SAFC v QPR image refers to gets a mug’

Monsieur Salut writes: Clive Whittingham, the editor of the QPR fan site Loft For Words, did the honours in our Who are You? hot seat. He asked for a reciprocal gesture which we were naturally happy to make. He also asked Roker Report and we are fine with that, too (I have to cast the net wide in my search for Who are You? interviewees and sometimes end up with more than one and use both).

The result? Salut! Sunderland had another superb Who are You? – and Clive was able to run replies to his own questions put to our Pete Sixsmith and Roker Report’s Rory Fallow.

And by the by, Sixer’s latest edition of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team is once again a must-read joy in which he recalls seeing QPR for the first time, not at Roker Park but Feethams. The Rodney Marsh story – a chance meeting with a bruising opponent in a Darlington night club after that match – is worth a visit in itself. And here is what Loft For Words (please note the clickable link, Clive!) made of the Salut! and RR interviews (but also check the caption above if you want to win a mug) …

Read more

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team: QPR cup glory, Rodney Marsh’s Darlington night out

by
Rodney Marsh: ‘you kick me about all afternoon and then follow me to the night club’ (see footnote*)

Pete Sixsmith‘s first encounter with QPR was not against Sunderland but Darlington shortly after Rodney Marsh had scored one of the three goals that won a side then in the Third Division the league cup final against top flight opponents, WBA, despite having been two down at half time. The game at Feethams is largely forgettable, but Sixer recalls with a grumpy harrumph the din made by Hoops fans with a drum and shares a delightful anecdote about Marsh’s post-match evening out.

This is the latest instalment in our Memory Man’s entertaining and rightly acclaimed twin series on Sunderland opponents: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team (for SAFC home games)/The First Time Ever I saw Your Ground (when we’re away) …

Read more

SAFC vs QPR Who are You?: ‘we’ve had some lovely players – and Joey Barton’

by
Clive Whittingham, aka @LoftForWords at Twitter

Monsieur Salut says: stand by for a sharp, literate analysis of all that is wrong and the bits that are right about Saturday’s opponents, QPR, and what has gone awry for Sunderland. At least half a dozen headline-worthy phrases leap from Clive Whittingham‘s* answers. Clive, a business and sports journalist, is the editor of a QPR fan site, Loft For Words. I loved his one-line assessment of his club: ‘not big, or that good, but we’ve had some lovely players’.

Of players linked to both clubs, he admires the current but injured captain, Nedum Onuaha – remembered fondly for his wonder goal vs Chelsea for us but not, apparently, a favourite of all Hoops fans – but came close to adding Anton Ferdinand to his ‘worst players’ answer. As for us, he likes Simon Grayson but suspects we’ll end up firing him as the season progresses. Perhaps the kindest way of interpreting his remarks is that he thinks we’re a basket case …

Read more

Sixer Says: McNair stars, Talbot assured as Sunderland overcome Hertha Berlin

by
Sleek Sixer savours a Sunderland success

Pete Sixsmith is beginning to see some Sunderland wins. Sadly, they are not so far in the Championship. Maybe that will change on Saturday when proper football returns after the tedious international break. The Under 23s overcame a strong challenge from Hertha Berlin and a returning Paddy McNair caught Sixer’s eye, as did Duncan Watmore and a young keeper he thinks we may hear a lot more of …

Last night saw a welcome return of the Premier League International Cup as we hosted Hertha Berlin at the Stadium of Light for our opening game.

Read more

QPR Guess the Score. Q(uick) P(oints) R(equired) for Sunderland

by
Here’s one made earlier …

Of course, Monsieur Salut has no intimate knowledge of the QPR manager’s feelings ahead of Saturday’s game at the Stadium of Light. But if someone calling himself Ian or Holloway, from west London, plumps for an away win in the comments below, you’ll know soon enough.

Read more

Sixer Says: if Leeds Rhinos can rise to the occasion, why not Sunderland too?

by
Danny Maguire, bowing out on a high. Image: By Fleets (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

Pete Sixsmith gets back to roots with a trip to Old Trafford, not to see Seb Larsson score an unlikely winner or Vito Mannone make the penalty shoot out saves from Adnan Januzaj and Rafael to earn a Wembley appearance but to savour a great day out for a man fond of the oval ball as played by 13 men on each side rather than 15. The outcome of the Rugby League Grand Final and the ups and down of his beloved Leeds Rhinos set him wondering about Simon Grayson’s ability to inspire the discipline and commitment needed to move Sunderland up the Championship table.

As always with Pete’s outings, what you are about to read combines incisive sportswriting, travelogue and wit …

They say that your first love is the one that you look back on with the most affection, even though you may have found deep satisfaction or a mutual love-hate relationship with the partner that you eventually settle down with and live all life’s ups and downs. I know these things. I read them on the back of a matchbox.

So it is with the teams that you support. Sunderland AFC and I were manacled together in 1962 and that hardware has stayed securely tied since then, apart from a brief escape in 1998 after a needless relegation which a little investment and some shrewd buying would have prevented.

Before and after that, it’s been like Jack and Vera Duckworth’s marriage – plenty of ups and downs, lots of shouting and cursing and a fair bit of weeping when things went desperately wrong, but a commitment that has stuck through thick and thin, with thin being noticeably more represented than the former.

Read more

Sixer’s Sevens: Preston North End 2-2 Sunderland. Point gained or two lost?

by
Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

Monsieur Salut writes: before the game, I was wondering – controversially, I know – whether there was more chance of identifying a believable character or storyline twist in Line of Duty (sorry, I’m catching up late on this well-acted, gripping hokum) than of finding reason for belief in Simon Grayson and the Lads. Then we led at Deepdale, came back after going behind and secured a valuable, morale-boosting away point.

Pete Sixsmith decided to give Deepdale a miss, less in protest at the incompetence he has witnessed week after week than because Shildon had an FA Cup tie at Banbury (and saw our adopted home town win 3-2). He handed the baton to our associate editor John McCormick, whose seven-word verdict appears below. John had a much better outing than his last one, to Goodison, and enjoyed his afternoon. BBC’s Radio Newcastle pundit Gary Bennett expressed disbelief after the match that the referee had given nothing when the PNE keeper beat a returning Duncan Watmore to the ball but outside the box and with his arm – but yet again we couldn’t hold on to a lead and keep a clean sheet. Benno made John O’Shea his star SAFC man and said something along these lines: ‘I know it’s only a point but that was 100 per cent better than what we’ve been seeing’ …

 

Read more

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Preston North End’s Deepdale

by
Sleek Sixer now …

Now we’re getting into it, or at least Pete Sixsmith is. True, proper history. His journey through the football grounds of England brings us to memories of the era when Blackburn Rovers were admitted to the Football League instead of cup-winning-toff-defeating, working-class Blackburn Olympic, who subsequently folded, the first penalty kick was yet to be taken, and one of the founder members of the Football League and twice recent Champions were about to be upset by some upstarts from even further north. Pete wasn’t there, of course. That took another 80 years. Let’s read on and find out how his visit went:

Read more

Preston North End vs SAFC Guess the Score: the deep end at Deepdale

by
Another chance to win a prize – and at last the mugs of previous winners are about to hit the road

What is left to say? Another game, another sense of trepidation or, if Pete Sixsmith was right in his clinical assessment of our plight after his bleak evening at Portman Road, another reason to be “largely past caring”.

Preston North End vs Sunderland. Fifth top vs second bottom. It seems beyond belief, whatever the level of pessimism that our deputy editor Malcolm Dawson and others experienced in the summer.

Read more