If you’ve seen my original article for A Love Supreme, now is the time to read the opposing view. I repeat Salut! Sunderland‘s offer to grant Tommy Coates, the letter writer, reasonable right of reply on these pages……..but this is what he had to say in his letter to ALS

Having read Colin Randall’s article SundIreland in ALS 159, I felt I had to write a few lines in response.

As a supporter for nearly 40 years, 22 of them whilst living in Scotland, I am not a big fan of this Paddification of my team, club and town and I also disagree with Mr Randall’s view that people who feel this way are members of the “Far Right No Surrender” brigade.

It would appear that Mr Randall’s answer to reasoned argument is the same as other left wing/commie pinko journalists. Throw in the phrase racist/bigot/homophobe etc and hope we go away.

Whilst I welcome the support of the Drumaville consortium and the appointment of Mr Keane we all know how quickly the Irish support would disappear if Keano moves on to a smaller club, say Manchester United.

ALS is a football fanzine and not the place to be discussing the past 400 years of political and religious history of Ireland, but it would be fair to say that england and the English do not hold a particular soft spot in an Irish Catholic’s heart and to think that we are all now one big happy family is a little naive onm Mr Randall’s part.

My article in A Love Supreme. See here for an introduction to Tommy’s grievance with me:

Plymouth at home last August. Lots of our fans had gone along with Niall Quinn’s desire to make it a day for the Wearing of the Green. By the end of the game, though, we’d lost 3-2 and were bottom. The only happy faces among green-clad spectators belonged to Argyle’s small travelling support.

And on the Metro, one Sunderland fan – an overseas exile like me, back for one game – could hardly contain his fury. “All this f****** Irish sh**e,” he said. “I don’t go along with it. We’re an English club”

Maybe, he was one of the far-right “no surrender” boys. Or maybe it was just the disappointment of defeat talking. But what, I have often wondered since, did he make of the incredible route our season later took as the Irish links became ever stronger?

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Does this mean my street credibility is about to soar?

For being a reporter, I have been jostled by striking miners in south Wales, threatened by nasty little Proddie thugs in east Belfast (and by nasty little Catholic thugs in west Belfast), had guns pointed at me by curfew-enforcing and possibly crack-crazed soldiers in Sierra Leone and advised to make myself scarce at demos in Islamabad and in Serb villages on the Kosovo border.

Oh, and I’ve been stoned by Muslim youths in Vénissieux and once tried in vain to negotiate a “ransom” to repossess the expensive camera nicked from my photographer when she was beaten and robbed by African youths in a dodgy Parisian suburb.

But never until now have I been denounced in print as a “left wing/commie pinko” journalist.

Turn to page 43 of the new edition of A Love Supreme and there it is. I am condemned by “Tommy Coates, Suddicker……exiled in Cardross, Scotland” for an article welcoming the new Irish supporters of – and massive financial support for – the club Tommy and I both love.

But it’s best that I allow my words, and his, to speak for themselves. The next posting here – and it will follow quite quickly – will be the piece I sent to the ALS and which appeared, from memory, in the last edition but one.

If anyone has contact with Tommy, let him know that I will then run – at similar length and subject to changes only on grounds of decency or defamation, which I am happy to negotiate – his response.

In the meantime, as the third article in this mini-series, I will post his ALS letter – in which he expresses his unease at the “Paddification” of Sunderland AFC – in full. You may be our judges.

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