SAFCDownUnder
Winger
I don't think Sunderland fans have ever really blamed Bristol City for their part in the debacle. You're absolutely right that any club, including Sunderland, would have done the same when presented with the knowledge that was made available. The thing we hate is Jimmy Hill's actions in this - he clearly violated the integrity of football, yet he presented himself as a paragon of virtue with the game's interests at heart. An obnoxious person in every way imaginable. But we should have taken care of business ourselves and not lost at Everton to even allow the farce to develop.Bit of a sticky one for me to comment on, I agree with you all that Hills actions were wrong and it was definitely cheating.
With that being said, if you were in our position, 15 minutes left and you needed a draw. If you didn't play for the draw, tried to score and ended up conceding, and going down.
To this day you would still be talking about the 'f***ing idiots' in 77 that only had to draw with 15 minutes left and the other results finished, but still managed to go down.
I'm not saying it's all Coventry and not us (although it sort of was), but with 15 minutes to go and relegation on the line I would bet my house on every other team in the league doing the same.
It would have been even more intriguing if Coventry had still been winning when the final score at Everton came through. I wonder if they would have then allowed Bristol City to equalise? I know we were losing when news came through of your equaliser and, the way we were playing at Goodison, the realisation quickly set in that we were down before the game ended - we kept hoping that you'd score a third one, but we all knew there was no point, as we certainly didn't look like getting an equaliser, and then Everton scored the second goal in the last minute and it was all over.
After the euphoria of our draw at Norwich on the Saturday, we just didn't get started and Everton won because they could, not because they really went hard at it. A truly horrible day.