Well, what can you say when you have to drive 1800 miles through four countries in two days just to see Roy Keane play 451 again? Although to be honest no one in attendance really cared too much about the formation. We’d travelled by air, sea and rail to the Iberian peninsula’s sunshine to see fat sweaty men dressed in red and white playing with a large inflatable penis.

Honest! I could end this report here because that was the scenario.

We found the ground, safe and sound. Set up the ALS stall, sold our wares, loved the craic and had a crate of chilled beer to help us on our way. Thing is loads of other hardy souls from Wearside turned up in need of an alcoholic beverage, so we gave most of our drink away. Oh well, it was class anyway.

It was pretty difficult to keep up with who was playing where because there were so many substitutions and general tactical changes, but we started the game with Gordon, Bardsley, Nosworthy, Collins, Wallace, Yorke, Edwards, Reid, Whitehead, Richardson, and Murphy. The other players who came on at one stage or another were Fulop, Anderson, Higginbotham, Kavanagh (whey!), O'Donovan, Leadbitter, Chopra (and then off again), Stokes and finally Prica.

It was a surprise to see Kav warm up, but a nice one. Richardson looked very slim and Edwards looked sharper. However, no new signings were on show. Sporting seemed outraged by our physical nature and jumped ten foot in the air every time we came into contact with them.

Also being launched towards the sky was a ten foot male member. To start with it wasn’t that funny, but with very little going on on the pitch one lad took it upon himself to continually take the blown up dick from to one end of our support. It would then be passed along at high speed with folk banging it along the way to the other end. The young lad would then retrieve it and repeat the process. To say the Portuguese police were bemused would be an understatement.

Soon the procedure became really funny with spirits high amongst the thousand or so red and whites, themed chants began to filter out. “Flying high, up in the sky, we’ll keep the red cock flying high,” was soon followed by “Stand up if you love the cock.” One lass who was in a section not joining in jumped up proudly was made an instant hero. Other super heroes in the crowd included Batman and Superman in fancy dress. Basically our fans are mint, still you know that already.

The Lisbon travelling support were tame in comparison, although they did stare at us quite nonplussed in the bars before the game then waited for us to leave before starting to sing and throw flares down the stairs at us as we walked out. It made Tom edgy, but everyone else seemed to think it was quite funny!

We spent half time walking from one stand to another so we could get a beer, but by the time we queued impatiently and got to the front the SAFC fans had drunk the place dry. Good effort, but bad planning from the locals.

Anyway, by this stage Sporting had taken the lead with a soft goal from a free kick which Craig Gordon was seething with himself about. We drew level though and in between Kav kicking half of the opposition very hard and Chopra coming on and getting sent off and then Keano getting his marching orders too for complaining about it, we scored two late goals and won it.

We headed into town to celebrate this world famous victory against the European giants and stayed there into the wee small hours, well at least until it was light. Sunderland took over the bars as you’d expect and we all awoke with sore heads and headed to the beach. Oh isn’t pre season mint?

ALS Man Of The Match: Roy Keane for getting sent off for the first time since coming to Sunderland.

Final Score: 3-1

Bobby Blue

ALS Books click here