Salut!

The Loftus Road massacre, a QPR fan's 'masterpiece' response and warm feelings about Sunderland

 

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.

He’s Queens Park Rangers. I’m Sunderland. His football writing deserves to go viral

 

My friend and fellow Sunderland supporter Pete Sixsmith is the main reason Salut! Sunderland, the fan site I launched in 2007, was so good (and why it is so sorely missed after the new owner let it go to rot). If Pete commends another football fan site, it is likely to be worth a visit and he ordered me to look at this piece by Clive Wittingham, whose Loft For Words is the must-go web place for QPR fans.

Just now, they’re having a miserable time, an experience Sunderland followers know only too well. Our club is doing rather well and last week heaped more unhappiness on QPR by winning 3-0 at their place.

Normally I would have been there. Loftus Road is the second nearest senior ground to me, just two bus rides away (I can walk to Brentford’s dinky little new stadium). My younger daughter played for the QPR women’s team, joining just one year too late to take part with the other girls as super-extras in Bend It Like Beckham. I had friends in the home end on Tuesday. But I couldn’t go and made do with the substandard Sky red button option. 

Clive’s report may have hurt to write but was a joy to read, especially if you support Sunderland, of course, but perhaps also if you just appreciate top-quality, wholly irreverent football writing. It had Pete and I laughing out loud.

For the full works, excellent photos included, go to the LoftforWords link:  https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/news/59613/something-about-a-massacre-on-february-14--report

Here are chunky extracts ….

 

***********

Will I finally see Sunderland win at Wembley? YES!!!

5pm update: the The question in my headline was answered in the most positive way. 2-0 and out of this dreadful division

 

 My first Sunderland Wembley trip should have been on May 5 1973. The famous one when Jimmy Montgomery’s breathtaking double save stopped Leeds, then mighty, coming back from Ian Porterfield’s goal for us.

Should have been there but couldn’t get a ticket. In fact I stopped looking for one when the sports editor of the Harrow Observer (I was chief reporter) said he was so well in at Wembley that he’d sort it in a heartbeat. Never happened.

Since then, tickets have become easier for me to come by for a variety of reasons. 

 

Victories for Sunderland have not. 

 

Just one EFL Trophy (against not-so-mighty Tranmere) so of course I wasn’t there. 

 

Otherwise beaten in the Milk Cup Final in 1985 (my delayed Sunderland Wembley debut), playoffs 1990 in my absence  (but went up because of Swindon’s financial scandal), FA Cup Final in 1992, playoffs in 1998 and 2019, League Cup finals 2014 and 2019. 

 

So I’ve see us lose on each of my six visits to Wembley to see them. 

 

My friend and former colleague Kevin Maguire has suffered seven Wembley disappointments but will see neither a win nor defeat tomorrow. His niece is getting married in South Shields so he’ll be there  instead. On his behalf and mine, I’ll do my best to witness a victory to make up for all our heartbreaks.

The second photo is of me with granddaughter Maya at the 2019 playoff final. 

Have a merry Boris sort of Christmas

 

 

All but cancelled, Christmas Day 2020 is upon us.

Salut! wishes all its readers as happy a festive season as events make possible and prays, or would do it it did pray, for a less troubling 2021.

 

Maybe we should try to find the bright side of grim happenings.

Salut! wishes you all - or nearly all - a happy Christmas

My daughters, Christelle and Nathalie, knew how to please me this Christmas ...

There are always exceptions. I do not dislike many people in the world - two or three people at most that I know, a few others more famous/infamous that I do not.

Otherwise, I wish all readers a very happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.

If you wish to see more of what I write, navigate this site or consult the following:

* Articles for The National, Abu Dhabi at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall

* My seriously upmarket football website: salutsunderland.com

* badly neglected sites about the North East - salutnorth.com - and folk music, salutlive.com.

Joyeuses fetes!

Related articles

French terror attacks, the lure of jihad and flawed draconian responses

The Christmas Truces of the First World War

Minding our language: the word of 2014 is vape, not selfie

Back from Typepad's hell

Typepad has been the victim of cyber thugs for several days. That won't mean much to anyone who does not have a Typepad blog or make regular or occasional visits to Typepad sites. And even the latter may be completely unaware of Typepad in any case. The blogs just appear by magic.

Salut!'s journey: from the Seine to the Swale, Thames, Wear - and Med

The best way of announcing a development at Salut!, it seemed to me, was to go back to the beginning.

First, the present. Look to the immediate right and you will see an invitation to become a one-year or life Friend of Salut!. No one is compelled to subscribe but all who do will be warmly welcome.

Just in case you want your Christmas shopping to be easy ...

One late addition to my list: Victoria Hislop's The Return has an intriguing if implausible contemporary story wrapped around a gripping account of what the Spanish Civil War was like for ordinary people. See more here.

When this posting first appeared, I threatened to bring it to the top every so often in the hope of concentrating minds and getting at least some Salut! readers to buy their Amazon-marketed products here.

In the months that followed, I have done no such thing. But while hoping to restore normal service soon, I will settle for now for giving the item a fresh top-of-the-pile outing to cover me until my hand has recovered from a recent op.

Systemic hitch

Salut! needs a doctor. It is suffering from a little known but painful condition known as Typepaditis.

Ever since the web hosting operation (Typepad) introduced some fancy new "improvements", posting to the far-flung empire of Salut! sites has become a nightmare.

Who are you?

SEE NEW CLOSING DATE - I AM AWAY FOR A LONG WEEKEND AT A WEDDING IN JORDAN AND WILL THEREFORE EXTEND THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES TO MIDNIGHT UK TIME TUES OCT 21... THIS APPLIES EQUALLY TO THE POSTING ABOUT AGNES HUMBERT. THE PRIZE: ONE COPY OF THE HUMBERT BOOK FOR THE BEST REPLY TO EACH......

STOP PRESS: the prize for best reply to this post is one of the two copies I have available of a remarkable book on one woman's experiences of the Nazi occupation of France, Agnès Humbert's Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France. I will be writing about the book soon (and will offer the other copy in a separate competition then, Salut! having gone competition bonkers what with these and the Maddy Prior one over at Salut! Live). .....

My friends at Statcounter are very good at breaking down the figures for "hits" recorded by Salut!.

But I still have no clear idea as to why there has been a surge of interest in the site in recent weeks. OK, media organisation is stretching it; even so, the figures I reported last week are - so far - no freak.

It is just past midnight* in Abu Dhabi. The day's count is very close to 500. That's double what it was, say, a couple of months ago, five times what it was when I first thought I had an audience big enough to justify making an effort.

But who are you?