No festive cheer as Roy finally loses it

SATURDAY saw Sunderland managers past, present and future gather to witness an unexpectedly-exciting game.

Niall Quinn represented the past in the boardroom, with Keane the present and Martin O’Neill seems destined to be in charge at the Stadium of Light at some point in his career.

It’s one of worst kept secrets in football that the Villa manager is a Sunderland fan, something even he admitted last week, with an almost encyclopaedic memory of following us as a child. He revealed that whilst most Irish kids picked Celtic as their first team, he bucked the trend of Arsenal, Man Utd or Spurs and went for the Black Cats.

O’Neill reckons: “The sparkle never leaves you but it (the passion) has to do with growing up and becoming a professional. In England, when everyone was choosing their side, mine was always Sunderland. They’re my old team. I supported them as a kid and Charlie Hurley was my hero.”

When the Drumaville consortium were first looking to appoint Mick McCarthy’s successor, O’Neill was one of the first names linked to the post. There’s a huge affection for him on Wearside and assuming Roy Keane doesn’t spend his entire managerial career at Sunderland, he’d be a popular candidate again.

It was encouraging to see the gaffer explode with rage at the weekend. The world has been waiting to see Roy Keane the player, instead of the calm, cool character that has lurked as a manager in the dugout. Steve Bennett’s decision to disallow Danny Collins’ late winner incensed Keane to a shocking degree. It was nice to see he’s still completely mental.

On the subject of lunacy, it wasn’t particularly nice to see Dickson Etuhu arrested after last week’s game at Chelsea. When the news was first leaked around Wearside, we all assumed it was for crimes against football, but instead it turned out that he’d knocked someone’s front teeth out after an argument in a nightclub in Norwich. Sunderland has always been a club where off-the-pitch nastiness has been unwelcome, so let’s hope Etuhu either gets his act together or moves to Newcastle where their players normally behave in a such a manner. At least the victim will be able to have a front teeth wish list for Santa.

Speaking of the big man, Keane joked this week that he’d identified his January targets, saying “It’s a bit like Christmas, I’ve handed in my list and I’m hoping that when I come downstairs, they’ll all be under the tree! I know they can’t arrive until January but if they are there when I come downstairs, I’ll be a happy man.”

Wearside will be hoping Santa is good to him and that most of January will be spent winning games, rather than rushing round the sales trying to grab a bargain. Hopefully instead of faffing on with Meccano sets and constructing doll’s houses, he’ll be coaching international footballers in between turkey sandwiches and polishing off the last of the mince pies.

Villa’s fans deserve a lot of credit for making the journey north for the coldest match in quite a while, with not long to go until Christmas. They sang constantly during the game, which was surprising as they don’t have a great reputation as travelling fans and are quiet at Villa Park. They were serenading Shaun Maloney before he scored his free kick, which sparked a one-man pitch invasion that was ruined by our stewards.

A quick word of warning to any of you thinking about visiting the Stadium of Light as an away fan be prepared to be thrown out if you have the audacity to sing loudly during the game, stand up, or generally look as if you are enjoying your day out that you’ve spent your hard-earned cash on. We berate stewards at other grounds, but the Stadium of Light is right up there with the worst of them and it doesn’t help the atmosphere at all.

Finally, a big thumbs up to the FA this week. Not for their England shenanigans, but for finding time to select their FA Cup ‘Kids For A Quid’ scheme and choosing our game against Wigan. Whilst SAFC ran a similar scheme in the League Cup two years ago and got a full capacity crowd to watch Arsenal reserves, the game’s governing body should be applauded in their effort to make football more accessible.

* Martyn McFadden