Dion Fanning: Newcastle are football's future - entitled, belligerent and wilfully blind

Try as they might, Geordie Nation can’t simply stick to football or separate the success they will achieve from the source of the money facilitating it

FLYING THE FLAG: A Newcastle United fan waves a Saudi Arabian flag during the Premier League match between Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur at St. James Park. Pic: Daniel Chesterton/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

There is a scene in Anthony Cronin’s Dead As Doornails where Patrick Kavanagh is standing outside Mulligan’s as a man supervises others unloading a truck. The man owns the lorry and he boastfully tells the poet Kavanagh how many people he has working under him to which Kavanagh replies, “You are a highly insensitive fellow.” 

Kavanagh was always aware of the role sport played in cultural life and how the two intersected - “he’s only an oul’ handicapper,” he said of one writer, ”what we’re looking for are Classic prospects.”