On February 29th 1992 I made my first and, thus far, only trip to Burslem, where I was delighted to see Newcastle United defeat Port Vale by means of a solitary Steve Watson goal. Later that evening, in the lounge of The Station Inn, Silkstone Common, South Yorkshire, my then partner availed herself of the custom and practice of folklore associated with Leap Years, by initiating a chain of events that involved us marrying in Barnsley Town Hall on Friday July 31st; I can scarcely credit the fact that two decades have passed since that day, especially considering we divorced in October 2001.
This leap year will be marked by the death of my mother’s dog Ronan. Blind, stick-thin and becoming ever more visibly distressed by the day, the poor thing was put down at 10.30 on February 29th 2012. Frankly, there was no option; the dog had been my late aunt’s and when she went in to hospital with her terminal illness in July 2008, my parents took the little fella on, initiating out of expediency, then permanently when my aunt succumbed to lung cancer in September of that year.
When Xisco arrived at Newcastle United around the same time, I began calling the mutt by the hapless ex Deportivo bloke’s full name, Franscisco Jimenez Tejada, as both were unexpected and slightly perplexing arrivals. I have to admit that I’m no dog lover to start with, so the opportunity to welcome a highly strung, pedigree Maltese that was barely housetrained was low on my personal wish list. It was even lower on my old man’s, but everything he did in his later years was with the express intent of pleasing other people, whose needs he always put ahead of his own.
The dog was actually called Ronan, named after the sex phone-wielding leader of Boyzone; it only had 2 teeth in its head, as my aunt had insisted on feeding it the meat from the social services meals on wheels deliveries that she bought but never ate, preferring instead to live off a steady diet of tinned semolina and menthol cigarettes. However Ronan proved to be a crucial member of the extended family, as he provided a clear and continuing link with a disappearing generation and, following my dad’s death less than a year later in August 2009, the dog was a source of comfort and companionship for mam as she struggled to cope with the bitter, harsh reality of widowhood; goodness Ronan will be missed, the poor thing, but truly he had to go. The last time I saw him he was distressed, whimpering and repeatedly walking in to furniture and doors; it was heart rending. The unstoppable progress of anno domini always is, whether we’re talking about animals or humans.
Last December, a cyclist was knocked down and killed on Heaton Road, in one of those random, tragic events that stop the universe for the family of victims and provide a short paragraph on an inside page of a regional evening newspaper. This cyclist, a 71 year old grandfather, had crossed my radar very briefly back in 1986 when he was a neighbour of my parents, as he’d dug the grave for a family dog called Jeanie who passed in the autumn of that year. Now he’s gone as well; taken before his time in a million to one accident. Two dogs, a cyclist, an aunt and my father; all gone, forever. At the same time, there's illness and worry about a dying grandparent, a poorly pet and a friend with a health scare all whirling round my head as I spread my time too thinly to help anyone properly.
Who knows where the time goes?, written by the late and much lamented Sandy Denny is no longer in the live repertoire of Fairport Convention, who were in blinding form at Gateshead Sage on Sunday 26th February. The set they played was a fabulous crowd pleasing one, including highlights from their whole career; Matty Groves, Walk Awhile, Meet On The Ledge, of course. It is hard to believe the band have been in existence for 45 years. Similarly, the end of January marked the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, which, in one of those bizarre coincidences of history, took place 6 days before Hereford United knocked Newcastle out of the FA Cup. Are there many more iconic images of 1972 than those two events? Without wishing to rake over old ground, as it is an indisputable fact, backed up by the British Government’s own Saville Report, that the Brits were guilty of mass murder in shooting dead 13 unarmed civilians at a Civil Rights march in Derry. Perhaps the most eloquent interpretation of the aftermath of those brutal, stunning events was by Noble Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney in his poem Casualty, who described the funerals of the murdered thus -:
It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral,
Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band
Lapping, tightening
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.
The elegiac beauty of the words complements the barely restrained fury of the poet’s thoughts and creates a stark, brutal image of senseless slaughter and a community uniting in defiance of the imperialist aggressor. Yet, the story Heaney tells isn’t the correct one; the funerals of the Bloody Sunday victims didn’t take place in St. Columb’s Cathedral in Derry, but in the parish chapel of St. Mary’s in the Creggan Estate. Heaney himself was not present at the funerals, nor indeed had he attended the Civil Rights march in Derry on 30th January 1972, as he was a lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast at the time, some 65 miles to the east.
Clearly his non-attendance at these two events does not diminish Heaney as a poet in any way, but his reputation among the Nationalist community did receive a knock following his failure to show at the funerals; perhaps that is why he silently acknowledged his error of judgement, with the long-suppressed poem The Road to Derry. Written to be sung as a ballad by the wonderful Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, who passed away in 1984, the poem reads more as an auto da fe of one who was absent than the superficial travelogue and bingo card listing of sectarian outrages against the Nationalist community it initially seems -:
and the cold woods of Hillhead:
A wet wind in the hedges and a dark cloud on the mountain
And flags like black frost,
mourning that the thirteen men were dead.
The Roe wept at Dungiven and the Foyle cried out to heaven,
Burntollet’s old wound opened and again the Bogside bled;
By Shipquay Gate I shivered and by Lone Moor I enquired
Where I might find the coffins where the thirteen men lay dead.
My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger.
I walked among their old haunt,
the home ground where they bled;
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter
Till its oak would sprout in Derry
where the thirteen men lay dead.
I was able to pay my respects to St. James’ Park on the day Newcastle United’s European aspirations received a grievous blow and, according to those who see Twitter as a chance to make sly digs (when they’re not talking about airports, restaurants or socks), NUFC Fans United was mortally wounded or, at best, hideously compromised as an organization.
I hadn’t wanted to go to Newcastle against Wolves at all. When a free ticket manifested itself (thanks Gary; hope your liver has recovered from Hamburg), I was under instruction from my son Ben that he needed it. Having forsworn NUFC forever in summer 2009, like myself, he’s now coming back in to the fold, tentatively. Personally, I was happy with a proposed visit to Lobley Hill for Rutherford versus Percy Main, but then events conspired to prevent me attending.
On Friday night, one of Ben’s mates called him up to say he had a spare pair of adjacent tickets in Level 4, so Ben decided to sit with a pal rather than alone. He still wanted the other ticket though, as another of the Heaton Manor Lower Sixth long haired layabout crowd fancied going, which was fine by me. When I’d provided him with 8 freebies for Newcastle v Watford in December 2009, his social standing had risen immeasurably, especially among the rest of his rugby scrum mates who’d scored for a complimentary seat in the 1892 Club.
Then, Saturday morning, playing in goal for my over 40s side, I was injured. Initially I thought I’d broken my foot in a collision with an opposition forward, but it turned out only to be bruised, though I may have a strained meniscus as well, which is nice. Hobbling off to get changed at full time (we’d drawn 2-2 after being 2-0 up and cruising early on, so I suppose it was decent preparation for an afternoon at SJP), I had a text from Ben saying he didn’t need the ticket as his mate, who’d somehow got it in to his head the game was a 5.30 kick off, “couldn’t be arsed” to get up for a 3pm start. The pounding in my foot and ache in my knee meant the thought of a comfy seat at St. James’ rather than an afternoon stood on a grass bank by the side of the pitch at a windswept Beggarswood began to appeal, so I made my 7th trip to a Newcastle game this season; a figure that astonished me I have to say.
I’d learned earlier in the week of the NUFC Fans United plan to lay a wreath where the sign for St. James’ Park on Barrack Road had been removed the week previous. To me, this was a very effective gesture; visually, 6 pall bearers in morning suits carrying a black and white coffin, Graham from MAOC holding a black and white wreath, with “St. James Park Forever,” picked out in carnations and Steve Wraith in a “wind-blown surplice and soutane” leading the procession from The Strawberry, accompanied by the solemn beat of a bass drum, looked excellent, especially as the procession was accompanied by about 100 mourners. Everyone on Strawberry Place, outside Shearer’s and coming up the hill from the town, stopped and looked; there was spontaneous applause and more people joined the procession.
After laying the wreath, the gathering broke up and Steve Hastie distributed press releases to the assembled journos, while Steve Wraith did interviews. The whole thing was a success; it got the message out and publicised the great work NUFC Fans United is doing in trying to proactively galvanise supporters in to doing something. Predictably it has resulted in several bruised egos among the cyber intelligentsia who have either dismissed this as a Steve Wraith publicity stunt (it wasn’t) or complained that they hadn’t been consulted about this gesture. Several webmasters are currently in possession of perambulators that have been denuded of playthings.
Now, the latter complaint is an interesting point; if NUFC Fans United is a loose amalgam with no set constitution and a floating membership that is open to all, then there is not the mechanism to sit down and pass resolutions about potential activities; it simply requires action and activity, which must be better than sniping on messageboards or other social media outlets. Of course, anyone who disagrees can attend the forthcoming meeting next Monday night in the Irish Centre at 6.30 to discuss the impact the march had. From this distance, it is impossible to know what the consensus of active members is. Alternatively, there are those who will always prefer to sit at keyboards and gripe from a distance. Forgive me for naming names, but I didn’t see any form of protest from NUST or The Mag on Saturday gone. Surely seizing the initiative and doing something, as NUFC Fans United did, is better than impotent hand wringing?
Of course, following the march, there was a game to attend. As I took up my seat 5 rows from the back of the Gallowgate, but right on the penalty spot, it seemed akin to watching the game through a giant letterbox, but I have to pay tribute to the gang of youngish (18-24) fans around the Q70 area in the Upper Tier; they showed immense, positive support throughout the game. The vile booing at full time did not come from this section. Yes it was frustrating, but there is no justification for degenerating in to childish strops.
While Newcastle had their A Team out , there was no Plan B after Wolves refused to lie down and die. At 2-0 up with 16 minutes gone, the game was won; Cisse’s finish was smart and Gutierrez’s goal was sublime. In retrospect it was clear that a third would have made the opposition fold, but instead we went back in to our shell, allowing Jamie O’Hara, Matt Jarvis and Kevin Doyle to dictate the play. Lucky to be still 2 up at the break, we conceded one, seemed to ride the storm and then went 4-5-1 seconds before they scored a scrappy equaliser that summed up Williamson’s difficult day at the office. Complacency had cost us the lead and, as ever in these circumstances, once the initiative has been voluntarily ceded, it is often difficult to wrest it back. In this case, it proved impossible.
The last 20 minutes saw more and more desperate attempts to find a breakthrough; pointless long balls were fired at Ba, who was literally and metaphorically shackled by Wolves defenders as referee Walton ignored the repeated fouls on him, Guthrie had perhaps his most exacting period as a professional player, with every pass he attempted failing to find its target, while Ben Arfa pranced, posed and failed to pass as he became more and more of a synthesis of Ketsbaia and Martins as the game went on. Still, he did almost win it.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t have had any better a day in Lobley Hill, where Rutherford cruised to a 2-0 win. The most disappointing thing about missing this game was my consequent failure to catch up with my old mate Raga from our FPX days. His texted match report made for gloomy reading: huff and puff without anything in front of goal… couple of wide of the mark chances… looked like several players not up to it… or having an off day… a lot of wanting to hoof it or flick on… nothing in between…
So, a gloomy day all round. It is undeniable that if Newcastle play that badly against the mackems, they will lose, which is why I’m relieved I’m not going. Being a pretend uber ultra, I did make it back to SJP for the Youth Cup quarter final against Blackburn on Monday for another 2-2 and another predictable Newcastle United loss on penalties.
Sadly the game had died for me well before the inevitable failure from 12 yards; at 9.15 on Monday night, I’d received the call about the dog’s imminent demise. RIP Ronan or Francisco Jimenez Tejada as you were sometimes known. RIP to everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment