Bow Legged Chicken

I smuggled some coins in. The search failed to discover my cunning concealment. Perhaps that was the crime those young girls were guilty of…

We haven’t got a metro and we’ll stop yours as well! Who pulled the cord, was it Marvin Rees or Dan Norris?

As for the stewards, whose wages we are paying to stand in the way of our view and basically do nothing (and that’s the good ones who are not looking for an excuse to throw their weight about): why couldn’t a couple of them be issued with a bin bag and litter picker and be sent out at halftime to reduce the swail of litter vortexing around the pitch?

First one out was a middle aged bloke who climbed on some infrastructure in the concourse at halftime and started a bit of a singsong. Vindictive leading steward was determined to get him. Bit OTT but fair enough he probably broke some ground regulation, and was clearly a leading actor. Then they came back for a couple of his mates, probably to prove that resistance is futile. Where it got really silly is when they forcibly ejected two young girls, and also a man who tried to help them in the final minutes of the game. Whatever they had done it wasn’t a matter of national security and if it was a serious offence it could have been dealt with after the game. We are 100’ up in the air with a long series of staircases to negotiate on the way down. Police could intervene then if there was a really good reason to do so. Genuinely shocked to hear these girls were cuffed behind backs. What threat were they? Perhaps Avon & Somerset not so bad as we think…

Condensed version. Stick or twist. Atrueredblue thinks twist, as they are getting old and have less to lose if we bust. I’m risk averse, waiting for stars to allign. In the meantime, can we use AI to script managerial comments? Less time wasted for all concerned.

Got up here a day early to avoid train strike, so went to find the place. Smaller than I remember. Or just less packed. First time I heard the “They’ve found Lord Lucan!” joke. (Playing Centre Forward for Sunderland/whoever.)

One of those pubs was probably The New Derby, where a Sunderland fan spat in my pint in 1977 (and they’d won!) My mate stood up and put his jacket on “we might get our heads kicked in, but I don’t want to lose my leather jacket.” A gang of Sunderland walks over, here we go I thought. “Wos the marrer wi your marrer? Pardon. Turned out he wanted to know what had upset my mate. Like you said, free drinks all night.

For fans of classic pub interiors, The Dunn Cow (next to Sunderland Empire) is a must visit, although on Thursday all their ales were a bit hoppy/hazy/citrusy for my taste. For a more traditional Sunderland pint, they have Double Maxim in The Peacock up the road. If you have time for a stroll across the city centre, there is Black Sheep at the Barge and Barrel on Burdon Road, close to the (towering) war memorial.

For fans of classic pub interiors, The Dunn Cow (next to Sunderland Empire) is a must visit, although when I visited on Thursday all their ales were a bit hoppy/hazy/citrusy for my taste. For a more traditional Sunderland pint they have Double Maxim in the Peacock down the road. If you’ve got time to walk access the city centre, I found some Black Sheep in a craft union place on Burden Street, near the (towering) war memorial.

You must have been sat next to me. Three points and a fresh barrel of Bass, what more do you want?

A city with a pub like The Dolphin deserves to stay in the Championship.

Most fun bit for railway nerds is you can walk in behind the ticket windows and imagine you are an extra on ‘Oh Mr Porter!’ For the rest of us, you can look at tracksuits from the 73 final, which filled me with nostalgia.

The fan’s museum just after you walk over the bridge is worth visiting. It’s a bit of a shrine to Roker Park, but situated in a neo-classical former railway station that some might say is more grand than our ground. (And definitely more classy than gas ground.) Looks like you can drink beer there on a match day.

Not many of us have the vocal range for that one! Need to recruit a choir!

He did that at a previous game and I left a note on his (presuming his) windscreen to give a one word explanation of what I thought of his parking choice, but it rained and will have been a soggy mess by the time he returned.