Tommy Martin: You would love to be happy for Newcastle United
HAPPY, NEWCASTLE FANS? Newcastle United CEO Yasir Al-Rumayyan (left) with co-owner Amanda Staveley and her husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi (right) at St. James' Park.
You would love to be happy for Newcastle United.
Did you see St. James’s Park before the League Cup win over Leicester City? Thousands of flags and scarves and a din that would have been picked up by the North Sea fishing fleet. A noise born of out of pure love, decades of frustration and the emotional release of a thrilling new era.
You would love to be happy for them.
Into their first League Cup semi-final in 47 years. Another step closer to a first trophy in 54 years and a first domestic trophy since they last won the FA Cup in 1955. Far too long for such a great club.
You would love to be happy for them.
Did you see how they played, the way they devoured Leicester? The job Eddie Howe has done? Turning them from relegation fodder into Champions League contenders in a matter of months. The best defensive record in the Premier League. The pure class of Bruno Guimaraes in midfield. Joelinton and Miguel Almiron, men reborn. The experience of Kieran Trippier.
You would love to be happy for them.
Did you see big Dan Burn? Scoring his first goal for his boyhood club in front of the Gallowgate End. The 6’ 6” left back who couldn’t believe it when Newcastle’s new owners made him one of their first signings last January. He was let go by the Newcastle academy at the age of 11, played non-league and was working in Asda when he got picked up by Darlington. Worked his way up the divisions before catching the eye with Brighton, earning his dream move home as a stop-gap utility defender.
You would love to be happy for him.
The north-east of England has the highest rate of child poverty of any region in the United Kingdom. Figures published last year showed that 38% of children in the north-east lived in poverty while Newcastle and Gateshead had the biggest increase in child poverty of any part of the UK since 2014. In some parts of Newcastle, levels of child poverty are at almost 50%.
You would love to be happy for them.
Eric Burdon and The Animals. and making a heartthrob out of Jimmy Nail. Inspector Lewis. Michael, Alan Partridge’s mate, from the Linton Travel Tavern. Sting sending himself up in . Cheryl Cole and the way she would tilt her head on X Factor. Ant & Dec ripping Boris Johnson to shreds on I’m A Celeb.
You would love to be happy for them, too.
The first football book I ever read was , the autobiography of Ronnie Simpson, goalkeeper for Celtic’s 1967 European Cup winning team. Simpson was 36 when he became a Lisbon Lion, but the most substantial part of his career was spent at Newcastle, where he played from 1951 until 1960, winning the FA Cup in 1952 and 1955.
That’s where I first read of names like Len White, George and Ted Robledo, the Chilean brothers who lined out together at Wembley in 1952, and, of course, Jackie Milburn.
Wor Jackie scored both Newcastle’s goals in their 1951 Cup Final win over Blackpool. His goal after 45 seconds against Manchester City in 1955 was the fastest in a Cup Final until Roberto Di Matteo scored after 42 seconds for Chelsea in 1997. Milburn’s record of 200 goals for Newcastle stood until Alan Shearer came along, and his statue stands outside St. James’s Park today, a reminder of when Newcastle used to win things.
You would love to be happy in their memories.
Kevin Keegan and the 1990s. Peter Beardsley, David Ginola, Keith Gillespie, Andy Cole, Sir Les. The 4-3 defeat at Anfield in April 1996, voted the Premier League’s game of the decade. A full-tilt title charge was stuttering by then, Keegan having responded to suggestions that the team was too open by signing flamboyant Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla. The wheels came off and King Kev famously lost it on telly.
You would love it – LOVE IT – if you could be happy for them now.
Before Mike Ashley, Newcastle fans had to put up with Freddie Shepherd as chairman. The caught him on camera in a brothel laughing at the fans for the money they spent on merchandise, calling female supporters “dogs” and describing Shearer as the “Mary Poppins of football”. And then they had Mike Ashley, who ran a proud football club like a shabby discount retailer.
You would love to be happy for them after those lads.
You would love to think that some of them at least have mixed feelings about the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. You know that most of them are aware that their beloved club is just a pawn in Saudi Arabia’s wider strategy of entwining itself in the economic and cultural life of the west while continuing to inflict horrific human rights abuses at home.
You know how hard it would be not to lap it up, this sudden success, and to explain away the misgivings. How it is much easier to point to all the business the British government does with the Saudis, like the BAE weapons factory down the road near Sunderland that makes missiles for their bloody campaign in Yemen. How can signing Sven Botman be any worse than that?
You know there is a group called NUFC Fans Against Sportswashing, who staged a protest before the club’s recent home game with Chelsea. They chose the Chelsea game because the last time Newcastle played Chelsea, the previous March, was the day after the Saudis executed 81 men, the biggest mass execution in decades. The group’s membership is tiny and they have been targeted online by Saudi-sponsored trolls. Mostly they are ignored by joyous fellow supporters who can’t believe how things have turned around.
And you would love to be happy for them, but you just can’t.
