Page 12 - 358264 LP231909 A Love Supreme 48pp A5 (Issue 257)

FOUR CAPTAINS
BALLY
BY SON OF SOBS
As cliched as it sounds, Bally wore his heart on his sleeve and was a real midfield enforcer who never gave anything less than 100%. If we’re all being honest, he’s the type of player we’re desperately missing at the moment. He wouldn’t settle for the standard of performances we’ve been seeing recently. Anyone who knows Bally or ever saw
him play knows why he’s my favourite captain. I
can imagine a lot of people share my opinion that he’s the greatest Sunderland captain of the last 30 years. There have been calls for him to be given
the managerial job pretty much every time we need one and at the time of writing Lee Johnson has been given the boot about 4 hours since. There might
be calls for Bally to be given the job but I think his time has passed, but having him just stand in the dressing room and scare the living shit out of the players if we’re performing poorly at half time doesn’t seem like a bad idea, does it? He wasn’t the most technically gifted played but more than made up for it with commitment to the cause and “never say die” attitude. The man is a legend and should be given the keys to the city at the first available opportunity. I’ll finish off with this, Kevin Ball was so hard that Curtis Woodhouse (Ex Sheffield United midfielder turned professional boxer) was asked about him on Twitter when discussing ‘the hardest players he’d played against’ and his response was ‘Just reading the name makes me want to apologise’.
LE BRACE, WAS ACE
BY MICHAEL CONROY
Paul Bracewell always seemed a little too cultured to be on the same field as most of his teammates. There was little hustle and bustle with him, just cool, calm and collected. When I went to the match with my friend he always used to criticise him because he said he got away with being bang average. “All he does is pick up the ball, turn around and pass it back to the keeper and the fans are all applauding him!” Context is an important thing though. For most of
my years watching Bracewell at Sunderland he wasn’t surrounded by a huge amount of quality. He would get on with his job quietly, break up play and find a sensible pass. He just brought an air of calm to a team that for large parts of matches were chasing balls. The biggest bugbear I have about Bracewell is that he left us to join the Mags, I wouldn’t have minded so much but the fact he was successful rubs salt in the wounds a little. All in all though he made 228 appearances for Sunderland across three separate spells. Bracewell didn’t have the bark of Kevin Ball, nor did he
have the same combative nature, he seemed like more of a deep thinker and the type who would be coaching players throughout the match. I watched Sunderland play in one
of the Checkatrade games and you could hear George Honeyman talking to all the youngsters all the way through the game, offering encouragement, that’s the type of captain I think Paul Bracewell was. He also had a lovely little step-in which could leave an onrushing opponent embarrassed. His brain was sharp and he was definitely a “thinking” footballer and should really be the blueprint for any holding midfielder looking to learn the trade.
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