Garry Steckles, with whom Monsieur Salut worked on a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, is not Bob Marley but knows as much about him as most living souls, spending lots of his time in the Caribbean, involving himself in the reggae scene and, a couple of years ago, publishing a biography of the great man. Another claim to fame: his grandfather – Garry’s not Bob’s – once owned Balmbra’s. The Blaydon Races link is appropriate: there’s always a downside to good people and Garry is a Mag. Tomorrow, we get his answers to our questions about Sunday’s Wear-Tyne derby. Today, we recall a brilliant piece he wrote for Salut! Sunderland before the 2008 equivalent, won by us 2-1 …

Before I start, I should point out that I don’t really have any memories of Tyne-Wear derbies.

Most of my Newcastle memories are from the Fifties, and while I might have been at one I can’t honestly recall anything about it.

From 1960 until I left for Canada in 1968, I was working every Saturday during the football season, either in the office putting out a paper or at a match covering it. Since 1968, I’ve been more or less a long-distance fan. Anyway, I think I can write around all of that. Here goes …
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Super SuperKev
Super SuperKev
Super SuperKev …..
Super Kevin, er, Kilbane?

Well, there are Kevins and there are Kevins. Somehow, ending that chant with the word Kilbane doesn’t seem right.
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There's a lot winning going on: our friends at A Love Supreme have just collected their second successive award for football fanzine of the year, Sunderland "won" the right to stay in the Premier and here – at last – are Salut! Sunderland's winners in the great Who Are They? awards …

Forget George Orwell, tracing the progress of the same breadcrumb each day on the breakfast table at his lodgings. The Road To Wigan Pier is a marvellous book, but Salut! Sunderland has discovered that the town provides shelter and inspiration for another writer of distinction.

Step forward Bernard Ramsdale, "landlord" of Ye Olde Tree and Crown, the Wigan Athletic fan site and clear winner in our awards for the best contributions to this site by opposing fans during the 2008-09 season.

Bernard, picture below, wins a copy of the customised Wigan Athletic book, kindly donated by Getting Personal. If the excellent Sunderland version of the book is any guide, he will be content with his prize.

Throughout the season, Salut! Sunderland received incisive, entertaining or warm articles from fans of other clubs. Finding candidates for the Who Are They? feature before each of Sunderland's game was the hardest part; once recruited, they rose almost without exception risen to the challenge.

Of the three three judges, two placed Bernard in first place and the third had him as runner up to Julian Boodell from Stoke City.

Julian accordingly finished in second overall position, ahead of the third-placed Mark Collar, the only shortlisted candidate from outside the Premier League (he previewed our League Cup game at Nottingham Forest). Read on for news of a special youth award – for Danny Warbrick of Bolton Wanderers.

Congratulations to all three, but also to the fans of Bolton Wanderers (Danny Warbrick), West Ham United (Ciaran Byrne) and Chelsea (Jerry Evans), all of whom picked up support from the judges.

This was how each judge voted:

Ian Todd, founder of the London branch of the Sunderland AFC Supporters' Association and a national council member of the Football Supporters' Federation:

1 Julian Boodell (Stoke City)

2 Bernard Ramsdale (Wigan Athletic)

3 Mark Collar (Nottingham Foerst)

Ian wrote: "I must say I found it hard and chopped and changed my order on re-reads. In particular, I found the fact that the questions varied from club to club offered a greater advantage to some writers than others. As far as the reasons for my choice go, I have been swayed by those who have benefited from a knowledge of relationships between the two clubs and an appreciation of some of the wider issues in football. My order of choice therefore related to the extent to which the writers included that in their pieces."

Pete Sixsmith, top writer at Salut! Sunderland:

1 Bernard Ramsdale – "should win for his name alone, but any post that makes me laugh, has a reminder of the great mudslide and shows great knowledge of football and human nature is bloody excellent in my book. His comments on the RL team are priceless"

2 Ciaran Byrne – "seemed a pretty smart guy and I liked his rant against Wembley and all that the modern game has become"

3 Julian Boodell – "must take guts to follow Stoke when you are called Julian; really liked his style and the fact that he had followed Stoke for so many years. Very good stuff"

Colin Randall, editor of Salut! Sunderland:

1 Bernard Ramsdale – "a natural wordsmith, a diamond football supporter in the broadest sense and a willing contributor who gave us not one match previews but also a second, each of great quality"

2 Mark Collar – "a fitting representative of a club with many similarities to Sunderland and obvious potential for a return to greatness"

3 Jerry Evans (Chelsea) – "a lovely, old-fashioned and entirely sportsmanlike read"

A Special Salut! Sunderland Youth Award goes to Danny Warbrick (Bolton) for a preview that demonstrated exceptional maturity for a lad of 16.

Julian receives a Philosophy Football "Against Mod

There’s a lot winning going on: our friends at A Love Supreme have just collected their second successive award for football fanzine of the year, Sunderland “won” the right to stay in the Premier and here – at last – are Salut! Sunderland’s winners in the great Who Are They? awards …

Forget George Orwell, tracing the progress of the same breadcrumb each day on the breakfast table at his lodgings. The Road To Wigan Pier is a marvellous book, but Salut! Sunderland has discovered that the town provides shelter and inspiration for another writer of distinction.

Step forward Bernard Ramsdale, “landlord” of Ye Olde Tree and Crown, the Wigan Athletic fan site and clear winner in our awards for the best contributions to this site by opposing fans during the 2008-09 season.

Bernard, picture below, wins a copy of the customised Wigan Athletic book, kindly donated by Getting Personal. If the excellent Sunderland version of the book is any guide, he will be content with his prize.

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So we’re all fretting away like mad. We need our minds taking off the trauma of 4pm-6pm Sunday.

Then let Salut! Sunderland offer a little relief by announcing that it has found three prizes for winners of the great Who Are They? awards.

No, we cannot offer a Championship season ticket for St James’ Park as they haven’t been printed yet and we wouldn’t want to tempt fate anyway. No flyaway holidays; not even a measly million from Chris Tarrant or your MP’s duck pond account.

But we have things football fans would actually want to possess:

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Blue murder for us on Sunday, forced to pray for good news from Hull or Villa? Or an extraordinary win that makes it unnecessary for us to want for anything except defeat for the Mags? If only Jerry Evans, in the second part of the final Who are They? of the 2008/9 season, could be proved right; Blues fan though he’s been since childhood, he not only thinks we’ll somehow manage it, but hopes so too. He is also a true gent who wants “hate” taken out of footballing rivalries – and rather disapproves of our desire to see the Mags go down – and whose thoughts have been joy to deal with. See the first part of his contribution here and then enjoy his responses to our questions …

So how has the season been for you?

The overall results have been excellent. Third behind an outstanding Man Utd and a resurgent Liverpool is no disgrace. Perhaps the long term injury to the magnificent Essien made the difference. And to hold the stunning Barcelona to one goal in three hours was a great achievement. If Chelsea had set out to throw everything at the Catalans, I believe they might have leaked several goals. Iniesta, Xavi, Messi and co are at the pinnacle of this wonderful game.

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The romantic in me says Sunderland will finally produce a performance worthy of our magnificent fans and beat Chelsea. The realist in me, er, can just shut up!
For our last Who Are They? feature of the season, we – by which I mean the Colin part of Salut! Sunderland – could not only have turned to a past contributor, David “Sid” Millward, but joined him on a junket via Grand Central and one or other of the SoL corporate bunkers.
I have chosen to stay in France – or rather the sight of the bank balance, as much as Sid being a Chelski fan, dictated that I should – and watch the game on some dodgy web link.
So Sid wasn’t asked to pen some more thoughts. Step forward instead Jerry Evans, even older than the old codgers at Salut! Sunderland but seen in action above with his grandson Nicholas. Jerry’s musings – return here tomorrow and you’ll see why he thinks people like the admirable Jeremy Robson are wrong to hate the Mags – make him a late entrant for the judging currently in progress for our first annual award. And guess who, according to the romantic in him, will win (Sunday’s game, not the award) …

So many years have seen me before the mast at Stamford Bridge that my name has changed from time to time – maybe to protect me because of my football allegiance.

Jeremy Evans was born in wartime – the end of 1939 – but I was known to the family as Jem by the time Great Uncle Bill sat me on his knee at Kingston in 1948 and declared that as I had a burgeoning interest in the game I must go and watch Chelsea play, as he himself had been doing since the year dot.

I dutifully obeyed, of course, and on April 16 1949 stood on the huge west banking at The Bridge for the first time, watching the powerful Derby County easily dispatch the Blues 3-0. I must have thought: “This is how it is. Visitors are strong, and they beat us because we are not very good.”

And for many years that simplistic verdict was not far off the mark. Incidentally, Sunderland, who finished eighth in 48/49, had a 3-0/1-0 double over Chelsea that season.

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No one in the above image from the cover of Peter Allen‘s* book plays for Portsmouth. Peter himself does not wander around Paris chanting Play up Pompey. But’s he a committed fan all the same. He tells Salut! Sunderland about his “cult” football book, explains why he rates Roy Keane but not – as a manager – Tony Adams and reveals the hard-of-thinking Pompey players’ approach to quiz nights …

When I last wrote about Pompey on Salut! Sunderland I doffed a blue and white bobble hat to all the great writers and military heroes with connections to the club. The enticing prospect of getting a literary or battlefield giant to pen a follow-up piece for football’s best written football blog was not lost on the editor, Colin Randall, but sadly Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bernard Montgomery were all unavailable for selection this season. Accordingly, I’m back answering the questions.

Just before doing so

This time last season more or less, we went to Bolton safe from the drop and with every incentive to get out there and express ourselves after a long, hard-fought battle to avoid relegation. Er, we all know what happened next. Bolton needed a win, and they got it. We didn’t turn up. This season, we could quite do with one. Will we get it? Will we ever get it? Welcome Danny Warbrick,* Wanderers through and through (and came to us courtesy of a former contributor, Craig Johnson, a familiar figure from the Bolton Wanderers FC fansites Burnden Aces and BWFC UK Forum). At just 16, Danny is comfortably the youngest writer Salut! Sunderland has recruited for the Who Are They? series. He turns out to be very perceptive about us and philosophical about both clubs. So did the fixture ring a bell for him, too? You bet it did …

Last season was obviously a massive game for us as if we hadn’t won that we’d have found it very difficult to stay up.

So I think it helped us that you were safe by then and seemed to have started summer early.

This season, as you say, things are the other way round with you desperate for the points whilst we now look all but safe. Whether we’ll have taken our foot of the gas remains to be seen as we’ve yet to actually pass the 40 point mark but I wouldn’t expect us to put in such a flat performance that you’ll come and just take the points. I think if you’re going to leave with three points you’re going to have to work for them.

And now for the questions:

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Another season of European football already assured. In the FA Cup final. Regarded once again as a force in the top flight. Not bad for what Everton’s chubby neighbour calls a “small club”. In returning to Roland Hughes*, the star of an excellent Who Are They? last season, we assumed Rafa would not be near the top of his Christmas card list. But then we’re just humouring Roly really, in the hope that his team will be kinder to us on Sunday than they have been in our last few encounters …

It’s been a fantastic season again. I was actually quite worried at the start as I really thought our place as the “next best team” would be threatened by more teams than in previous seasons – Villa, Spurs, Man City.

Thankfully, we’ve confirmed a place in Europe again (four top-six finishes in five years, not bad), and not just thanks to the other teams’ underperformance. We’ve also won a place in the FA Cup Final having beaten Boro, Villa, Liverpool and Man Utd to get there.

We are where we are through hard graft, some classy performances and having fought against the odds with key players (Yakubu, Arteta, Cahill and now Jagielka) out for long stretches of the season.

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