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.

Street League has linked up with Foosball UK in the auction of what is described as an “awesome Street League-inspired graffiti foosball table”. If that sounds as comprehensible as classical Greek, take a quick look at the YouTube clip and you may get a clearer idea.

The main thing is that the proceeds will go to Street League programmes that use football’s powerful appeal to help disadvantaged young people into or back into employment, education and training.

Street League and Foosball believe the quality of the table and the cause should ensure high interest and a selling price “upwards of £1,000″. The 10-day auction takes place on ebay between now and next Thursday (Oct 20) and bids can be placed by going to this ebay link.

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.

Salut! Sunderland extends its deepest sympathy to all Stephen’s relatives and relatives. Whatever subsequent inquiry, including an inquest, turns up, it is a desperately sad event and I am not surprised that his local paper reports that moving tributes have been paid to him. He leaves a partner, Trezza Azzopardi, whom he met while both were teaching at the University of East Anglia, and one child.

One of the circle of those close to Stephen is Jonathan – Jonny – Ward, a lifelong Sunderland supporter.

He writes:

Stephen was my partner’s brother (would have been my brother-in-law). He had family in the NE. Myself and Stephen’s sister Diane live in Hartlepool, with our family. I’m a huge Sunderland fan, so Stephen pointed me towards the interview on Salut last year and I know he was excited to be featured there.

Stephen really was an inspirational chap, totally charming, witty and intelligent. We shared some great footballing memories together – in particular joining the Stoke throngs at St James a couple of seasons back when they equalised in the last seconds much to the anger of the Toon (there’s a chapter about it in She Laughed No More).

Stephen didn’t enjoy as much the time we took him to Victoria Park to see Hartlepool beat Stoke 2-0 in the cup – they were awful that day. I also sat with him when Stoke beat us 1-0 at the start of last season – he’s the only bloke I know ever to have pulled out home-baked banana bread at half-time. But that sums Stephen up – very cool, very sophisticated and could not give a toss about what anyone thought about his fancy ways!

We will all truly miss him and it has come as a real shock and a tragedy for his family.

From the Evening News, Norwich, I learn that Stephen taught creative writing at the UEA after having graduated from its MA course in the same subject in 1998.

Ms Azzopardi, 49, said in her own tribute: “Steve was a talented and passionate man who excelled at everything he did. Whether writing books, cooking for family and friends, playing sport, or supporting his beloved Stoke City Football Club, his approach was always committed and stylish; he did so many things so very well.

“Steve made friends from all walks of life, but especially from the dog-walks of life – at Winterton, Whitlingham and the UEA – where he was a notable sight, if only because (as he liked to tell people) he chose his silver-grey dog to match his hair.

“He lived a full and vital life, and will be remembered with admiration for his courage, humour and sensitivity.

“We have so many happy memories of him; he was loved by so many. He will be greatly missed by all of us.”

Stephen was Stoke-born but moved to London when young to work as a painter and decorator specialising in interior design. He began writing later in life after moving to Norwich. As his career and reputation progressed, he became a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, helping students with their writing.

Stephen’s first book, a collection of short stories set in Stoke on Trent, was called It Cracks Like Breaking Skin. Then followed his first novel, Strides. He has since had success with books about his dogs, Walking Ollie, who has since died, and Along Came Dylan. More, including the warm recollections of an academic colleague, can be found at the newspaper’s site.

By way of a small tribute of its own, Salut! Sunderland will tomorrow reproduce the Who are They? questions and answers from last November.

Monsieur Salut

Image:

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.

Despite this, many readers have raised concerns about access to the site. We have heard of people from the North East to Surrey, from Canada to South America, having difficulty in seeing Salut! Sunderland at all, or – once at the site – finding it impossible to read full articles, post comments or navigate links to older material.

This is infuriating, not least because our own collective ability to deal with IT issues could be described in full on the back of a small bus ticket.

To add to the more persistent techie nightmares, we suddenly found today that it took 20 seconds or more for the home page to appear in full – or to do anything else once it did pop up. As suddenly and without convincing explanation as the problem had occurred, it then disappeared so that pages appeared to “load” normally again.

We are heartily fed up with having to say sorry. We recognise that not everyone will have the patience to wait for us to sort out these things. Some of those who do give up in exasperation will simply not return.

All that can be said is that we are fully aware that these problems are cropping up – not quite a new one each day, though it sometimes seems that way – and hope they will be short-lived and ultimately eliminated. And to those who have shown a bit of understanding and kept trying, thanks!

Anything the first team can do, the Lads who support them can do too.

Salut! Sunderland offers hearty congratulations to the Sunderland AFC Supporters’ Association London and Southern England branch team whose “hard-earned 0-0 draw” with Scotland – yep, a whole country – confirmed them as champions of the APFSCIL Football League second division.

Not sure how representative the picture – borrowed from the Wear Down South site – is. But this is the report of Ian Todd, founder of the branch:

Since being re-formed in February 2006, the team has finished 3rd for the last three seasons so well deserved congratulations are due to Mark Hay, who got the whole show on the road again, and the many players who have participated in games (and suffered injuries, sometimes serious, in the cause) over the period.”

Ian points out that Mark’s team has one more game to play – against Plymouth Argyle at the Metropolitan Police Peel Centre, Hendon, this Sunday at 2.30pm.

He urges anyone able to do so to go along and show support for their efforts, first taking care to let Mark know by emailing safcsalondonfootball@hotmail.co.uk to ensure security access, given the venue). Post match celebrations in the nearby Beaufort Arms (Heritage Avenue).

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 …

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.

Many Salut! readers will have seen my recent item on how someone or something calling him/itself Andrew A Sailer added such a comment to Pete Sixsmith’s excellent and moving tribute to Stephen “Squinny” Wilson, the Sunderland fan murdered outside a Bishop Auckland pub.

I have not the time to go through the many bogus comments that have already been posted at my sites, but I do aim to deal with these vermin-like creatures whenever I come across them from now on.

Accordingly, in you see a comment on a current or archived article that starts with the statement NB: I am a cretinous web parasite, and which may have had a link deleted, you will know that I have been beneath the Salut! bonnet and done a bit of tinkering.

If anyone else has ideas on how to block these peoples or things, without also making it harder for genuine readers to leave their welcome comments, please let me know at colinrandall@hotmail.com or in a comment below. Natural justice: Andrew A Sailer’s pernicious bit of self promotion can only now be seen if you opt in to reading it, since so many of you clicked the thumbs down icon that it now has the automatic note “hidden due to low comment rating” attached.

And if you’d like a reminder of how Pete recorded poor Squinny’s unjust and premature death, go to
http://salutsunderland.footballunited.com/2009/08/stephen-wilson-rip/

Colin Randall

* Rat trap photo taken, with thanks, from the Flickr pages of Rennett Stowe (as authorised by the Creative Commons guidelines).

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.

I am taking my first holiday since, well, the several I took while living in the UAE. Off to China tomorrow and due back on the eve of Portsmouth away. If I come across a useful full back or two, a creative midfielder or a surefire striker, I’ll let Steve Bruce know.

But I am leaving Salut! Sunderland in the capable hands of Joan Dawson, who was an indispensable figure at Wear Down South (formerly 5573), the newsletter of the London and SE branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association.

Joan will edit and post the elegant prose of Pete Sixsmith and, with any luck, her own brother Malcolm, who made such a striking debut on these pages after enduring his own version of Pompey away.

A few items have already been prepared for use during my absence. These include previews by Stoke City and Wigan fans of our forthcoming home games against their clubs (with a Pompey offering also in stock).

I pray that we will have a minimum of six more league points by the time I return.

So off I go, with this last-minute memo to Steve from Confucius:

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.

Colin Randall

* The photo is from the Flickr pages of “Maurice”.

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

But I suppose we cannot challenge the judgement of those who had to make the decision.

After a second meeting of the “safety advisory group” today, the club said severe concern had been expressed for the safety of supporters, staff and essential personnel travelling to the Stadium of Light, adding: “Many roads across the region are in a dangerous condition and there are major difficulties with the general transport infrastructure.”

Sunderland AFC’s chief executive Steve Walton said: “Whilst the Stadium of Light pitch is playable at present and the Stadium itself is also safe we must defer to the expertise of the Safety Advisory Group regarding other factors such as travel conditions.

“The consensus of the group is that it would present a significant safety risk to go ahead with the game and we are in full support of that judgement. There can be no compromise when the safety of supporters, staff and other personnel is at stake.”

Just forgive me for remaining ever so slightly sceptical.

So poor Chris Mann wasted his time previewing the game for us from a Bolton perspective. It was a good read, so apologies to him, but we hope he’ll understand that we trust the rearranged game means three points waiting for us later in the season.

Colin Randall