It is almost like the old days at Salut! Sunderland. The rebirth is very much a one-off but feels good while it's lasting.
Salut!'s football offshoot was a fan site that found an audience way beyond one club's already large fan base. By engaging with supporters of other clubs, usually via their own unofficial forums and blogs, we became quite well known and often respected far from Wearside.
Sadly, recurring technical problems and the expense of fixing them led to the site facing closure towards the end of 2019. Someone paid £500 - not quite enough to cover all those costs and others - to keep it live and assured the old codgers running Salut! Sunderland their beloved site was safe in fresh hands. A new editorial team was raring to go; great things were confidently expected.
What went wrong i have no idea. But after a desultory run of articles - just 16, on my count, between Jan 1 2020 and May 4 2020 - the successor site simply fell silent, save for some basic updates of the season-by-season stats. Most of the new content that had appeared covered aspects of the Sunderland women's team and their opponents which, commendable as it was, seemed a pathetically weak way of keeping the flag flying. We had, in any case, published loads about the Lasses, too.
We burst back into life at the end of last week, reproducing here extracts from a Queens Park Rangers fan site's very long and extremely funny report of a match that ended QPR 0-3 Sunderland. "A masterpiece," was the verdict at the surviving Salut! Sunderland Facebook group, from Paul Dobson, himself a anzine editor (Sunderland's excellent A Love Supreme).
I alerted Loft For Words, the QPR site concerned, to what I had done and the response has been phenomenal. When I last looked, 2,750 Rangers fans had seen my post.
What follows is an encouraging series of messages left by a few or them (starting with my explanation). Thanks to all of them and to Clive Whittingham, who runs Loft For Words, for consenting to the extracts being published here in the first place.
Sunderland, solidarity 21:21 - Feb 19 with 1522 views | salutsunderland | |||
We’ve been where you are and worse. I’m a Sunderland fan but have spent most of my adult life living closer to Loftus Road than Roker Park or the Stadium of Light. I hope you get out of this mess whoever the manager is. I no longer have the Salut Sunderland fan site but had to find a home for some of Clive’s sensationally funny, sad, tragic, irreverent, incisive report from our recent game. Bravo ! With his consent, extracts appear at https://www.francesalut.com/2023/02/hes-queens-park-rangers-im-sunderland-his-fo |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 21:49 - Feb 19 with 1313 views | Damo1962 | |||
Thanks mate. Much appreciated. Good luck for the run in. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 21:52 - Feb 19 with 1285 views | Mick_S | |||||
Same here, mate - good luck. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 21:53 - Feb 19 with 1271 views | BerkoRanger | |||
Respect, Salut...and all the best from me. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 22:05 - Feb 19 with 1150 views | colinallcars | |||
All the best mate - good luck. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 22:11 - Feb 19 with 1076 views | JAPRANGERS | |||
Thanks for posting Salut! Good luck for the rest of the season! |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 22:23 - Feb 19 with 965 views | R_from_afar | |||||
Many thanks for those kind words and good luck for the run-in, your lot are flying. Hope you go up, you Sunderland fans have had to be very patient and put up with a lot of disappointments. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 22:35 - Feb 19 with 873 views | lightwaterhoop | |||
Glad you have 'turned the corner' and are doing well.My Grandfather was from Sunderland and worked in in the shipbuilding,industry ,during WW11 he was sent down to Portsmouth to work on the Royal Navy ships so i have a soft spot for both of those teams as my relatives are all fans of one or the other. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 22:40 - Feb 19 with 839 views | colinallcars | |||
I have a connection too. My wife's from South Shields so a “ sand dancer “ we always get great seafood from Latimer's when up there. We used to stay in the Souter lighthouse but it got a bit too expensive. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 23:43 - Feb 19 with 587 views | Damo1962 | |||
I nearly ended up support the Mackems.As an impressionable 11 year old, after they beat Leeds in the 73 FA Cup final, I was fascinated by them - even though I had no idea where Sunderland even was. This is still, apart from 82 obviously....my favourite FA Cup experience. As LR was only a couple of miles away, and despite the efforts of neighbours to get me to support Chelski...the R's won me over. Been a life sentence since mind you 😉 .. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 08:45 - Feb 20 with 265 views | stowmarketrange | |||
We were all Mackems in that 1973 final.That double save by Jim Montgomery was brilliant,and at least they aren’t like those self entitled muppets 8 miles up the road. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 13:30 - Feb 20 with 211 views | FrankieFiveAngels | |||
Always had time for Sunderland, great fans and club, whereas Newcastle fans have always seemed more entitled. That 1973 FA Cup Final encapsulated the magic of football for me as a 7 year old. Leeds seemed to me to be the 'baddies' of that era and I was massively rooting for Sunderland as the underdog - Ian Porterfield, Jim, Montgomery, Dennis Tueart, Bobby Kerr all names etched in my memory. That was also my first full season supporting the R's that year and we went up! Ah, nostalgia.. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 14:59 - Feb 20 with 42 views | ParkRoyalR | |||
If you thought his Sunderland match report was good, you have to read his Middleboro match report, u-bend and all. |
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Sunderland, solidarity on 15:04 - Feb 20 with 32 views | MrSheen | ||||
* The very best thing about our dismal defeat at Blackburn was chatting to a Sunderland fan on his way up to Wigan with his son. He was ex-Navy and lived in Portsmouth but he never missed an away game. And yes, he was getting stuck into the cans as the train pulled out of Euston at 8.30 in the morning!
** talking of 1973 I recall vividly wanting Sunderland to beat Arsenal in the semi final. They did. I then wanted them to beat Leeds in the final. They did. Then I wanted them to lose at home to QPR after the final. They did. Obviously as a child I got what I wanted unlike today where my team has not won yet this year.
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