A mate and I were in Hull way back in 1967 when a lad across the street shouted, “Hey, you!” I shouted back, “Get offa my cloud” which maybe wasn’t such a good idea as he and his pal started running after us with violent intent. We legged it round the corner to the bus stop and luckily the bus back to the city centre was standing there so we jumped onboard and the doors closed just as our pursuers arrived to see us escape laughing.
The climax of yesterday’s match in Hull brought to mind that distant episode as Wallace snatched victory from the jaws of despair just in time to send busloads of our fans home happy. I don’t suppose he himself was that chuffed about receiving his second yellow card for celebrating with our fans but he’ll have to learn to contain his excitement a bit as we can’t afford to lose a player of his calibre every time he scores a goal. Anyway, when are they going to abolish that stupid rule? Sharing moments of joy with your supporters is surely what the game’s all about or am I missing something? If he’d been inciting them to invade the pitch, then I could understand it. Maybe he should have elbowed a Hull player in the face or chomped one of them; that seems to go largely unpunished these days.
Frankly, anything less than a win against the bottom of the table side would have been a disappointment and like everyone else I was just about resolved to put up with a point when Wallace got the goal that looked as if it was never going to come despite numerous near-misses. I was a bit worried when Bridges came on ten minutes from time as the script is always written for ex-players to score on such occasions. I was just glad they didn’t bring him on earlier. Other results went well for us and we made a healthy jump of four places up the table with further progress certainly not looking beyond us. There is the small matter of the Cardiff match on Tuesday and they’re going to be fired up after dropping two points at home yesterday. It’s a critical game for us and victory would show that we’re among the big hitters. Our defence is certainly still vulnerable but at the same time we’ve only conceded one goal in the last four home games. If we can get Elliott back in attack for Tuesday, then he’s going to be mighty hungry and will make a big difference. Brown missed too many good chances to secure the game yesterday.
One final note. Let’s hope we can put the bad vibes with Cardiff behind us and show their fans that the tiny minority of arseholes who disturbed the minute’s silence at Ninian Park a few years back aren’t representative of what will hopefully be another 30,000 + crowd. These big evening games under floodlights have brought out the best in Sunderland in the past and I’ve a feeling we’re going to win on Tuesday, 2-1. Trick or treat? Treat.
Laters.