Metalist Babies

It’s a close call, but the absolute worst thing about modern football has to be Joe Hart’s shampoo advert; not only does his pitiful am dram writhing and posturing stick in my craw, but the sheer unreality of a trainer washing a player’s hair simply exceeds any reasonable person’s ability to willingly suspend their disbelief. For one thing; where does the trainer get the water to rinse Hart’s hair? This repulsive 30 seconds of balderdash is precisely why I was so elated at the arse Hart made of Southampton’s second goal the other week; it was truly joyous to see him sitting there with his head and shoulders in his hands. His pride at the apparently excellent double save he made against Brazil was followed by his fall from grace at St. Mary’s. Obviously I didn’t see the England v Brazil friendly, as I was watching Chris Bannon, another excellent keeper, failing to stop Washington from going down 3-0 to North Shields. Simultaneously, Newcastle United in their other guise as L’equipe de la belle France, were losing at home to Germany; quell dommage, mes braves.

Returning to Hart’s pitiful product promotion, it may seem strange to claim this appalling advert is the most important event in football over the past couple of weeks, but it is hard to put in to words how enraged I am by this vile footage. Certainly the mock indignation about the supposed whiff of corruption surrounding Liverpool’s European game against Debrecen failed to ignite any similar passion in my oft-fevered breast, especially as it is only a month since I heard certain Newcastle fans saying in all honesty that they believed Pardew’s tactics and selection for the second half against Reading were a deliberate attempt to get the team to lose. Preposterous!! However, the Debrecen betting scam revelations came before the pair of erroneous offside flags that scandalously denied Newcastle United a comfortable home win over Metalist Kharkiv in the Europa League at SJP on 14^th February.

My preparations for this game started well in advance, as I attempted to make sense of the complex UEFA registration process that allowed us to field either Yanga-Mbiwa or Debuchy, but not both and definitely not Gouffran who was cup-tied, as well as getting injured in the unlucky 2-1 loss to Spurs the day before. That’s him, Ben Arfa and Marveaux who’ve all suffered serious leg injuries soon in to their Newcastle careers; get well soon, mon copain. The eventual decision to register Yanga-Mbiwa and not Debuchy presumably meant we’d be seeing Danny Simpson. That depressing news should have deflected the hysterical twitter storm that followed the final whistle at White Hart Lane, which signalled it was time for me to tune out and concentrate on the grassroots game, as Percy Main dismantled Ashington Colliers 3-0.

I set my gaze on the Europa League again on the Sunday, with Whitley Bay’s friendly against the Ukrainians. Disinclined to pay £10 to watch the game, especially as that is almost as much as Newcastle charge for European ties and double what I paid to see the Bordeaux game, I opted to initially watch Ireland lose to England in rugby with the usual bemused bafflement that the Garrison Game game engenders in me, before pointing my cycle in the direction of Hillheads. I arrived as the second half was about to start, made good a free entry and joined a crowd of 722 to watch Kyle Hayes produce a series of magnificent stops on a filthy, sleet-riven Sunday evening, helping Whitley to a very creditable 1-1 draw, both goals happening before I arrived. The last time I’d seen a live game at this time, Nobby Solano’s goal had done for Manchester City in Kevin Keegan’s first return to St. James’ Park in an FA Cup 5^th round tie in 2002. Despite Bay’s bumper attendance, which will go some way to filling the fiscal hole their Vase exit will have caused, I doubt such a strange kick off time will become de rigeur among the local non-league. However, lucrative friendlies against European opposition may be the way forward for impecunious Northern League teams, such as Bedlington Terriers whose imprudent largesse has seen them issued with a winding up order for unpaid debts.

I returned to Hillheads on Tuesday, opting to watch Celtic Nation in the flesh rather than Celtic on TV, where they got a far better result than their more illustrious namesakes. The aforementioned are a Carlisle based side, formerly known as Gillford Park, who have been taken over by a millionaire Scottish businessman, who is bankrolling the whole outfit; an expensively assembled Harlem Globetrotters of Step 4 and 5 players are attracting precisely no-one to see them stutter and fail to take NL Division 1 by storm. Tuesday’s game ended up 2-2, with both Celtic Nation goals being cheered only by players and coaches, while at Parkhead, Fraser Forster conceded one less goal against Juventus than he did against Benfield 5 years ago. The attendance at Whitley was a worryingly low 233, though on the positive side, Spennymoor’s top of the table home defeat by Darlington attracted 2,400 to the Brewery Field on Friday 15^th February. Five years to the day since Ashington attracted 1,945 to their final game at Portland Park and post-match trashing of the ground by some so-called supporters; it is wonderful to see such a crowd at a Northern League game. Even better to see Spennymoor lose!!

Apparently Spennymoor and Darlington fans were segregated; hopefully people voluntarily chose which end to watch from, as they both wear black and white, so scarves would not have been helpful in denoting individual preferences, though at least they were allowed, unlike at Hillheads. Metalist Kharkiv had made it a condition of playing the game that non-one wearing either Newcastle shirts or colours would be admitted. Thankfully, the weather put paid to the idea of anyone wearing a football top who wasn’t on the pitch, or even a polo shirt that matched Kharkiv’s daffodil yellow strip. I did wonder if the half time music was spun by the wonderfully named DJ Nae Fitba Colours who Mickey Hydes and I heard tell of when seeing Arthurlie v Linlithgow in Barrhead in May 2011 (http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2011_06_01_archive.html).

I’m not surprised Whitley acquiesced to this demand, as they’d have been prepared to do just about anything to allow the game to be played, considering the potential revenue they were looking at. I’m sure their fans were okay with this, though the fact is considerably north of 90% of Whitley’s support are Newcastle fans; the exceptions are the weirdos and social inadequates among them who follow the likes of Leeds, Liverpool, Man City or sunderland, on the telly I’d imagine. There may be a smattering of them, but they don’t stand out in the overwhelmingly normal Whitley Bay support unlike, say, North Shields, where the mad lads are in the majority. I think of these disturbing eccentrics as almost being a kind of footballing Koyemshi, the so-called clown priests of the Amerindian Zuni tribe whose role can be understood in the context of the following explanation; Zuni society was moderate, cautious, consensus seeking, structured so as to discourage any Dionysian impulse towards excessive individualism.

Both in the professional and amateur ranks, there are spaces for cranks, oddballs and conspiracy theorists; we don’t take them seriously, but they are fun to have a giggle at now and again. Now, we’re all in favour of the independent voice of fans in Newcastle Fans United which is why we’re trying to maintain dialogue with the club about ordinary supporter issues, in the absence of any clear leadership or involvement from the somnolent NUST, even if they did send out a nice email last week talking about how one of their number had enjoyed a lovely day out to Parliament for the Supporters Direct lobby on 5^th February. It’s nice to see that NUST has held a meeting with Newcastle United’s newly appointed Fans’ Liaison Officer Lee Marshall, because Newcastle Fans United had a really productive one with him too, on Monday 11^th February. First impressions are that Lee is a good lad; a Smog, but a good lad. Indeed, as I wrote in an article in toon talk 8, last year (http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/here-comes-your-man.html), the role of FLO would only be credible if it was an outsider in the role; any Newcastle fan would arrive with a load of emotional baggage and be cynically pre-judged before they’d hung their coat on the back of the door. Lee isn’t cynical; he listened, he wrote things down, he engaged with us and promised a future meeting of a wider constituency than just Newcastle Fans United  , which we warmly applauded. Lee knows who are the legitimate, independent voices among Newcastle United’s support; pretty soon he’ll be sifting the wheat from the chaff; the bean juice from the grounds. Frankly, what on earth would be the point of him wasting his time with unrepresentative, self-selected lone voices who seek to bad mouth other supporters and certain players with monotonous regularity, especially when that is all they keep on keeping on about? Far better the FLO engages with a republic of letters than a confederacy of dunces; Newcastle Fans United, NUST and the fanzine associated with each would go a long way to covering a great deal of Newcastle United’s engaged support, without wasting time with message board mentalists.

Those of us at the meeting could feel righteously self-satisfied that Lee Marshall saw for himself the legitimacy and value of the independent voices involved in Newcastle Fans United  ; we may be linked with Newcastle United’s best fanzine toon talk, but by the same token, NUST are pally with The Mag. Does this mean Newcastle’s third and final fanzine Black & White Daft is really the independent voice? Quite possibly. I know for a fact that Lee Marshall will listen to all supporter voices, before making his opinions known. I instinctively trust the man and found the meeting to be a productive way to spend the evening. Well, more productive than watching Hibs get banjoed at home by a St. Johnstone side including their highest paid player ever. Formed in 1884, the man who has the honour of trousering the largest wedge by a sportsman in Perth ever is Mehdi Abeid. Yes, our 18 year old reserve player Mehdi Abeid. Insane eh?

Equally insane was the idea that my ticket for the Kharkiv game was in Block D of the Strawberry Corner with the Toon Ultras. That said, after finding the games against Atromitos and Bruges torpid in the Milburn Paddock at the Leazes and the Maritimo game deathly dull from the East Stand, this had the chance of being as enjoyable as the Bordeaux game I’d watched from the Gallowgate. In this instance, Poznan Jamie had purchased the tickets and his St. Valentine’s Day treat was a lift there and back.

I had to lubricate myself to try and get in to the spirit of the occasion, mainly because I’m even more cantankerous sober than drunk and can start an argument in an empty room, never mind a cramped section of a football ground. A pint in The Tynemouth Lodge before we left, a free one in The Forth courtesy of a loyalty voucher, before a trio in The Bodega had me oiled and garrulous on my way up to the ground. Inside, it was leaping; everyone who wanted to make some noise had migrated to the Strawberry Corner and the noise was fairly impressive in the first period, even if the replica shirted bairns belting out any O’Brien couldn’t have been born when Lennie Lawrence fancied Liam over the wall back in October 1992. The Don’t sell Cabaye song seemed to be top of this junior pops. Sadly, events on the pitch didn’t match up to the level of teen testosterone in the stands; a wrongly disallowed goal and a bad miss by Cisse should have put us on easy street, but things looked ominous as it became clear Metalist are a handy side, which makes the second leg a worrying prospect. Then again, with only 30k in the ground, do people really want Europa League football? Has the Premier juggernaut made all other football competitions irrelevant in many people’s eyes? If so, that is an awful thought. Then again, I’ve watched us lose in Europe for 35 years since Bastia and Johnny Rep came calling in 1977, so I’m almost insulated to disappointment, though experience does make our wonderful 2007 Inter Toto Cup victory all the sweeter.

At half time, tired by standing, I bought a coffee and migrated to an almost deserted Milburn Paddock at the Gallowgate end; I walked around the perimeter and wasn’t challenged for my ticket, as I selected an ideal seat on an aisle about halfway up. Perhaps it was the beer wearing off, but I was soon aware of how miserable and moaning my new neighbours were; they had hardly a good thing to say about a pretty solid performance, even if I have to concede they were closely watching the game, unlike many of the cherubic choristers on the other side of the pitch. I did agree with them that playing Yanga-Mbiwa at right back was simply daft; he should have partnered Taylor surely? While I was grateful for a seat at last, I would say that I probably enjoyed the experience more with the geeks and replica shirted teenagers in the first period, especially as the ones around me all got up and buggered off as soon as the clock hit 86.30, while the Strawberry Corner Koyemshis were furiously pogoing as they love the Toon.

At full time I headed back to The Bodega for a final pair of pints and to collect a bottle of Asti Spumante I’d brought for my pal John, as he’d won it in a raffle. No champagne for him and no chocolate or roses for Newcastle United, as the only Valentines cards were yellow ones for Tiote, Cabaye, Sissoko and Gutierrez. All in all, the whole affair was a bit of a let-down; let’s hope for better fortune in the Ukraine for the second leg.