After three days of continual eating, boring relatives annoying me and late levellers by Everton, it was time to hit the road and head to Blackburn.

Despite the A19 being relatively quiet, it seemed that every car on it was determined to crawl along at fifty in the outside lane and refuse to get out of my way. In the end I realised it was easier just to drive in the empty inside lane while cars full of people returning from festive family visits crawled along with their parcel shelves full of presents.

Eventually free from the shackles of slow Skodas I pulled over at Birch Services to get a coffee and top up the fuel to save me stopping on the way back and guess what? No coffee. No petrol. So Costa Coffee and Esso what do you sell? Call yourself multinational providers of oil based fuel and caffeine products. I know it’s Christmas and all that, but did ALS run out of magazines and t shirts? Did pubs run out of beer? No. It’s Starbucks and Shell for me from now on!

Normally we’d take a load down there, but following BRFC’s price hike and subsequent reduced allocation, the bars around the ground were not as full of my red and white brethren as they normally are. Shame really since it’s normally a big day out.

On to the game, well after Heslop eventually turned up in his old French van with Paris number plates on (he’s always late) we climbed the 300 steps and just about made kick off. The big news was the line up. No Jones, no Reid, no Rico, no Catts, no Steed, no Mensah! Fuck...

If you’d asked me at 3pm I’d have taken a point with the very weak line up of: Fulop, Bardsley, McCartney, Da Silva, Nosworthy, Murphy, Henderson, Cana (C), Meyler, Bent, Campbell. And subs: Carson, Zenden, Healy, Reed, Anderson, R Noble, Liddle.

With the three kids on the bench (Reed, Noble and Liddle) who normally travel via the ALS bus to away games, not the team bus, it was fair to say I was shitting it. In fact I was expecting Steve Bruce to call me up to see if I was available.

Obviously Blackburn don’t play football because they are managed by Fat Sam. They just pump the ball forward and play for set pieces, so they can bring the illegally tall Samba forward and hurl the ball at our defence. Well that was the first half and thankfully our makeshift team kept them at bay.

The woman behind me slagged Murphy off throughout, I don’t like him either but I don’t boo our players. However, she didn’t notice the good work the Irishman did turning the Rovers defence inside out before Bent blasted us one nil up not long after my half time tea. We celebrated for a whole ten seconds until Blackburn kicked off and scored immediately! Typical Sunderland.

Thankfully, Jordan Henderson majestically set up Bent to restore our lead and send the Sunderland faithful mental. We were still celebrating when El Hadji Diouf came on as sub and made it 2-2. God I hate him.

Still as I said earlier I’d have settled for a point beforehand and with nine players unavailable those who did play did very well.

Final Score: 2-2

ALS Man of the Match: Jordan Henderson (again)

Chris Hardy

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