Refereeing decisions going our way - at last
It’s been another busy week on Wearside with speculation over our new manager gathering pace. Match Of The Day 2’s Kevin Day popped into our offices prior to the game against the Albion to find out the latest news on Keano’s successor. He jokingly apologised that he only sees us when we’re struggling, but many a true word is said in jest.
The media in England seem to love creating witch-hunts to get rid of Premiership bosses. The vultures were circling over Juande Ramos at the start of the season and eventually they got their man. Soon after they made a laughing stock out of Newcastle United, granted it wasn’t difficult, before moving down to Wearside to play havoc with Roy Keane.
They’ve had their meat now Roy has walked and then they turned their attention to Paul Ince. After that success, they’ll move onto Mark Hughes. The frightening thing is that many of those calling for heads will then fill their pages by criticising Premiership chairmen for wielding the axe too quickly.
On Saturday’s evidence, the biggest change we could see post-Keane is a lot more refereeing decisions going our way. Roy was always polite and courteous in public towards officials, but we were victims of some shocking incidents during his tenure and it could be due to his attitude behind the scenes.
The changing room for the referee and his linesmen at the Stadium of Light has two doors, both with different locks: one to enter the pitch and one to leave the stadium. After Steve Bennett disallowed a late winner against Aston Villa last season, Keane waited (not very) patiently outside his door so that he could tell the ref just what he thought of him. After hanging around the exit for quite some time, Roy apparently went to the other door to see what was taking the officials so long, only to discover they’d already fled.
Apparently on the Monday morning Roy called Sunderland’s maintenance guy to his office to find out how many keys there were for each of the separate locks. He then made sure one exit was permanently secured and took every set of keys there was for that door, put them in his pocket and headed off. It smacks of Brian Clough, but keeping one of the exit doors locked might go some way to explaining why referees seemed reluctant to award us anything under Keane’s tenure.
I personally don’t think it’s a coincidence that just after half time against WBA we got one of the softest penalties I’ve seen at the Stadium of Light, thankfully the only controversy was over who would take the spot kick. Kenwyne Jones was on a hat trick, but Djibril Cisse has the greedy mean streak that most top strikers do and so it was Flashy Pants who blasted it home like a rocket. For the remainder of the game our forward duo seemed on different levels, shooting instead of passing to the other, who was normally better positioned.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed that they seemed to have a very public falling out, though Teddy Sheringham and Andy Cole didn’t talk off the pitch for two years and still managed to win the treble for Man Utd. I don’t care if Jones and Cisse want to cross each other off their Christmas card lists, as long as they’re doing the business on the pitch. Life in Sunderland is good again, albeit sans-manager. We might be in the relegation zone but we’ve got back to beating the sides around us, which is the most important thing.
ALS’s Christmas party took us to the city’s classiest drinking establishments after the game. In Paddywhacks, Wearside’s main Irish bar, the band sang an amusing cover of Smokie’s ‘Living Next Door To Alice’.
It may have been high spirits, alcohol or a combination of both, but in unison the crowd replaced Alice with Keano in the infamous chorus of the song. I think it’s safe to say we’ve moved on.
* Martyn McFadden www.a-love-supreme.com
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