The defeat of Exeter City, with a quirky scoreline, had Salut! Sunderland delving into murky territory. The introduction to Sixer’s Sevens wondered whether Pete Sixsmith ‘enjoyed a nine-goal thriller, in a sadomasochistic sort of way’ and his e-mail this morning talked of the ‘pain and pleasure’ of the occasion. Let Sixer, aka Mr Whiplash, explain …
There are different ways of looking at this. Good news: we’re through to the next round, we scored six, Defoe grabbed a slick hat-trick, Watmore and Gooch got most of a half each and were bursting with enthusiasm, Exeter fans had a great night out.
Then there was the bad news. The half time verdicts of Nick Barnes and Gary Bennett were not heartening to those listening on the radio or via the club website. Indispensable to the absent fan – absent as in everyone except just under 14,000 home supporters, since Exeter took 495 seats – B&B were unimpressed. A HT scoreline starting Sunderland 3 is excellent, says Barnes, except that Exeter had 3 as well. ‘You think the defending sounds grim,’ said one of the 14,000-, Pete Sixsmith . ‘It looks even worse. Three times in our box, three goals.’ Then the second half came, Rodwell nodded home strongly from Larsson’s corner, Watmore’s sheer persistence brought a fifth and the game was surely won. B&B were not so convinced, but Jermain’s third came and won it was. We’ll learn in more detail whether Sixer enjoyed a nine-goal thriller, in a sadomasochistic sort of way, or went to bed facing a nightmare about our defence.
‘The score sounds like a thrashing but Exeter made a real game of it,’ Barnes. ‘Until Watmore came on,’ Benno. …
How does anyone get the impression they have been banned from a football stadium when they haven’t? Monsieur Salut remembers being told he was banned from a folk club in Newton Aycliffe, after comments in his folk column for the now-defunct Evening Despatch, and having to attend a hearing by the club’s committee to get the ban lifted.
With Micky Gray and Sunderland AFC, it’s a little more mystifying.
Will Sunderland get a first win of the season, boosting morale with any luck ahead of the trip to Villa? Or will Exeter City slip banana skins under our feet?
Fans of the Devon side, including the 300-500 expected to travel up for the game, are welcome to join in Guess the Score though it will probably be a just-for-fun comp. On the basis that no prize is only marginally worse than a coffee mug, have a go anyway.
Exeter City and York City drew in their League Two game on Saturday as did Sunderland and Swansea, the Premier teams some might expect to waltz past them in the League Cup. Whatever happens in Swansea-York, however, we know better than to count chickens, though it’s a fair bet the travelling Exeter fans will be counting empty home seats at the SoL. We found two fans of the Grecians willing to contribute to the Who are You! series – Paul Sussex*, who runs the Exeweb site (@exemsg at Twitter) and Neil Le Milliere** – and promised to use both sets of replies. Both will be at the game and here they give refreshing accounts of life beyond the Premier …
As a Swansea supporter studying at Durham University, Bobby Gardiner* could not have been much better placed for making it to Saturday’s game. But the agreeable life of a student means he still has plenty of holiday left and cannot get up to the North East. But he’s more than satisfied with the Swans’ start to the season (draw at Chelsea, home win vs the Mags), predicts an away win against Sunderland but is the first WAY interviewee of the new season not to predict relegation for us
Marcus Procopio*, a supporter Down Under, is a welcome occasional visitor to Salut! Sunderland. This is his assessment of the current crisis, with perhaps only its timing in our favour …
An insipid preseason has now been followed up by two losses to start the season – to teams unlikely to feature in the top half of the table come the end of the season. There are plenty of questions and there is genuine concern that we do not have the answers.
Yesterday, Salut! Sunderland attracted more than 6,000 hits. That is an astonishing volume of traffic for a piddling little site but what a shame it takes a crisis to draw in such numbers. There was plenty of good writing to greet those arriving here for the first time, or so we like to think, but not much of it was upbeat. Can Dick Advocaat and his team at last repay the strength of support they get (er, until things go wrong)? Guess the Score in Sunderland vs Swansea City ….
Having spent four years at Sunderland, Connor Wickham could be forgiven for thinking that football fans seldom get behind their own players, but after his first experience in a red and blue shirt at Selhurst Park, the striker was quick to reference the backing he received.
Jonh McCormick again:
Not quite half a century ago I spent a Saturday evening in the cellar of Norwich’s Orford Arms, after an overnight coach trip, a long wait until the 3pm kickoff and a defeat. By then I was knackered and only wanted to drink but some of the others who’d made it – possibly the pensioners you read on this site these days – weren’t going to let trivialities such as a loss stop them dancing on the table. After all, we were Sunderland and they were just Norwich. Then came 1985, 2013, and so on, and, maybe, we should acknowledge that the Canaries, upstarts who only reached the top rank just before we won our second FA cup, deserve their Premiership status and are entitled to dance on our grave.