Salut! Sunderland has been asked to give a little space to a fund-racing project bringing together the football charity Street League and the table football people Foosball UK..

Street League sets out to deliver “football and employability programmes to some of the UK’s most disadvantaged young people” and claims “countless success stories” working with 16-25 year olds who may be unemployed, not in education or training or had trouble with the courts or substance abuse.

Regular sessions for jobless young people are held at City Space in Sunderland and Temple Park leisure centre in South Shields, as well as many other parts of the North East where Sunderland supporters are less likely to be found.

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Salut! Sunderland last heard from Stephen Foster, a richly talented man whose books on supporting Stoke City probably made him little or no money but stand as Hornby-standard classics of football writing, in January.

Two months earlier, Stephen had contributed an excellent set of answers to the Who are You? questionnaire for the Sunderland v Stoke City game. When I thanked him, he replied: “Make it an annual event, unless one of us goes down.”

Tragically, there won’t be an annual event. Stephen was found dead at the early age of 48, probably having drowned, at Trowse Meadow, Whitlingham Broad, not far from his Norwich home last Thursday. He had earlier been reported missing.

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Image: Mrs Logic

We have the sterling assistance of Pete Sixsmith, Luke Harvey, Bill Taylor and our Who Are You? contributors to thank, along with the good fortune of a long break without proper football.

But one way or another, Salut! Sunderland has done its utmost to keep up a decent stream of of interesting, amusing and plain daft articles despite Monsieur Salut’s severely reduced activity in his immediate post-op phase.
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Anything the first team can do, the Lads who support them can do too.
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Late news just in from Lance Hardy, author of the acclaimed book on Sunderland’s momentous FA Cup Final victory over Leeds United in 1973.

He will be signing copies of the book at the Stadium of Light official club store between 11.30am and 1.30pm on Sunday – that is, before the match against Man Utd – with four heroes of our Class of 73: Jim Montgomery, Dick Malone, Dave Watson and Dennis Tueart.

If you came to Salut! Sunderland to read about Lance’s book signing, now help yourself to a spot of site navigation. See, for example, the list of recent items to your immediate left and you will get an idea of our extensive build-up to Sunday’s game, our last at home and United’s last chance – slender as events at Anfield may make it – of holding on to the Premier League title.

And then come back tomorrow to read about our planned awards to fans of Sunderland’s opposing teams who, all season, have supplied their own thoughts on forthcoming games against us.

The last contribution of the season will not be eligible for an award because it will come not so much from a Wolves fan as from someone connected to the club – and ours – in a different way. That narrows it down a bit …

We have finally accepted the repeated advice of the web gurus of footballunited.com and resolved to act against the spammers who pollute Salut! Sunderland‘s comment field.

The problem has become worse has the site has grown, notably in recent months, to the extent that tedious daily cleansing is now required to rid the site of the drivel planted by people acting or purporting to act, as we have seen, on behalf of legitimate or seemingly legitimate businesses and sites.

In future, if you have not posted in the past, your comment will be held to await moderation.

This is a pain for you, the poster, and for me, the moderator.

It delays good, funny, supportive or critical comments appearing until I am able to get to them. But it is a step forced on us by the relentlessness of the spammers, who actually boast about what they can do to build up a site’s profile. Let them rot in hell.

And if anyone comes up with a better solution, I am sure they will let me know.

Colin Randall

Follow Salut! Sunderland‘s example and give some help to a great cause …

The lads from the superb Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme deserve our support as they prepare to climb Mount Kilmanjaro this summer.

The trek is in aid of the Coco children’s charity chaired by Steve Cram, the athletics gold medallist turned commentator (also a lifelong SAFC fan and president of the supporters’ association’s London branch)

Martyn McFadden, ALS’s editor, and his pals need £2,800 to finance the project and the total raised so far – at time of writing – is in need of a boost.

Here’s news of one that should help raise the necessary money: a chance for readers in striking distance of Sunderland, to help turn Martyn’s hopes into reality and, at the same time, enjoy dinner in the company of Steve, plus former SAFC stars Kevin Ball and Gary Bennett.

Tony Jeffries, Sunderland’s boxing Olympic Medallist, is also among the guests at an event to be compered – note the spelling, ALS; compared means something else! – by Jeff Brown, from the BBC.

It’s at the seafront Roker Hotel on Friday March 19, the night before we play Birmingham City at home, and costs £30 a head. Sounds a good night, and in aid of a good cause, and the price includes champagne on arrival and a three course dinner.

Salut! Sunderland devotes a little of its meagre income each year to a charity project with some Sunderland AFC connection; the rest buys the odd Premier pint or non-league pie for Pete Sixsmith, or keeps the odd wolf from my door. So we’ve chipped in £50 to Martyn’s appeal, which can be viewed at http://www.justgiving.com/Martyn-McFadden.

Colin Randall

No game this weekend – though we should, of course, have been playing Southampton in the FA Cup – so it seems the right time to deal with a spot of necessary admin: how to combat a scourge of the internet age …

Salut! Sunderland, and its sister sites Salut! , Salut! Live and Salut! North, have been infested by an ugly, virulent pest called the website parasite.

The aim of the people posting comments which appear at first glance to be genuine, but can quickly be seen to be bogus and probably generated by computers, is to produce artificially inflated stats for visits to their own, usually unrelated sites or promote Viagra, medicines or whatever else they are trying to flog.
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After the recent blitz of posting, Salut! Sunderland – or part of its crew – is abandoning ship, or at least indulging in a little shore leave.
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Sunderland v Bolton is off, the only consolation that it was postponed early enough to stop people travelling. But in times of dire shortages of grit for the roads, are we losing ours as a country? …

The answer is probably not, at least not on the basis of a football match being called off. We haven’t necessarily become a nation of wannies.

But I cannot help thinking how we managed in the past.

The news came not long after I had written this at the Blackcats list:

To which Mick replied:

I remember The Big One in 1963, when the snow lasted for 2 months. I also did a paper round in all weathers (including New Year’s Day, which wasn’t a Bank Holiday until the mid-70′s).

And I also remember seeing games played on snow. It couldn’t have been deep, but they scratched out the markings and played on a white pitch. I’ve seen this at both Roker Park and St. James. I also have a vivid memory of seeing it on telly for a European Cup game between Spurs and (I think) Dukla Prague, which would make it 61-62 season (Spurs were champs in 61). Like with your first memories of games under floodlights, there’s something magic about watching a game on a snow covered pitch. It loooks great in white

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