Even more gloom after pilgrimage to Pompey

RECENTLY your average Sunderland fan has spent the weekend like this – moan after a Saturday defeat and then hope and pray everyone else loses so we don’t slip any further.

This time around it was our turn to put in a soulless performance on Monday night after everybody else had done so.

Thankfully my weekend was made an awful lot better as I set off from the office on Friday night. Just as I was about to switch my laptop off, an email arrived confirming that A Love Supreme had won UK Fanzine of the Year for the eighth time and second year in-a-row, as well as Best Premier League website.

As depressing as it is following Sunderland sometimes, getting recognition for being the best at doing it makes the slog seem worthwhile.

It was horrible being the ones looking helplessly on as results trickled in over the weekend but thankfully things went as well as we could have hoped for. Hull leapfrogged above Newcastle again, as the Magpies slipped back into the drop zone with Middlesbrough all but doomed and West Brom now condemned. We should have been in action at Fratton Park as well, but Setanta TV decided that three weeks before the game was more than enough notice to switch the fixture from a Saturday to Monday and thus ruin our last away game of the season.

Traditionally Sunderland fans celebrate the end of the season with fancy dress and booze, this time it was with a Monday trip on our longest journey of the season. Most supporters I know had planned on making a weekend of it, with hotels booked on the south coast on the Saturday night, thus breaking up an 800-mile round trip with a night or two on the beer. Thanks to Setanta, hundreds of Wearside pounds were wasted as hotels were cancelled and those hardy souls who could still make it had to book both Monday and Tuesday off work. You wonder at times like these what the last straw will be that makes supporters turn their backs on football for good.

One of my pals who decided not to bother rearranging his life in order to watch a 90-minute football game thought he’d let the TV companies rule his life and duly called Setanta to subscribe. He’s not got their product already, but thought for the sake of a one-off fee he might as well save himself a few quid by watching it at home instead of in the pub. Bad move. There’s a two-month minimum term, which added to a connection fee meant it’d cost him £32 to watch a game of football on his own TV. For heaven’s sake, that’s more than the cost of a match ticket! Quite frankly it’s a disgrace. It’s bad enough that fans are being exploited by TV companies but having a near 800-mile trip switched with just a few weeks notice and then ripping supporters’ eyes out when they try to buy your stupid TV product is sheer lunacy.

It’s little wonder that fans up and down the country are getting fed up; you wonder if the TV companies would rather games were played out in front of giant advertising hoardings rather than thousands of passionate fans.

Away from the world of sanitised soccer, and Monday was a noisy but ultimately damp squib. Another negative performance, another defeat means we must wait another week until we know our fate. As much as I love Sunderland AFC, I can’t wait until this sorry waste of a season is over.

We’ve won just one in 12 games and that is relegation form, no doubt about it. Still, our fate is in our own hands, we just need to beat Chelsea at home and we’re home and dry. Easy, eh?

* Read more from Martyn McFadden on www.a-love-supreme.com