The Cruel Ministers....

Hibernian FC were relegated from the Scottish Premier League on Sunday 25th May 2014. This has upset me greatly....

… calling home our exiled friends abroad

That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,

Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,

On April 25^th 1993, Kevin Keegan’s first full season as Newcastle United manager was drawing to an end. His fabulously attacking, open side were closing in on the First Division title and a well-deserved promotion to the Premier League. The Magpies’ opponents on that soaking wet Sunday lunchtime were local rivals sunderland; if the game had been played in conditions conducive to proper football, it seems likely the home side would have won by a cricket score. As it was, the points stayed on Tyneside after a single goal victory, courtesy of an early free kick by Scott Sellars, who bent the ball round the wall and in off the post at the Leazes end in front of the demoralised and drenched away support. Perhaps the only noticeable thing about the visiting side’s sluggish, insipid performance that day was that most of the players appeared to have been suffering from ringworm, which was the most plausible explanation for the fact that almost all of them had had their heads shaved in the lead up to the game. Risibly, the truth was actually that this trichological aberration had been at the instigation of then sunderland manager Terry Butcher, who had sequestered his team away the night before at Otterburn Army Barracks in the wilds of the Northumberland National Park the night before, in an attempt to instil the idea that they were commandoes on a dawn raid into the minds of his squad. This risible attempt at cod psychology was so successful that sunderland had one shot on target all game and continued to flirt precariously with relegation for the rest of the campaign, avoiding the drop on the final day by a single point. Butcher, whose pitiful version of tactics appeared to consist of crass populist post-match cheering and singsongs in front of the away fans, a la Paolo Di Canio, rather than any significant tactical intervention, was relieved of his duties in November 1993 after a 3-1 home loss to Southend saw the Wearsiders fall to the foot of the table.

On May 24^th 2009, much to the vicarious glee of a reported 83% of football fans, Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier League after a spineless, woeful 1-0 loss away to Aston Villa. After a season marked by unnecessary managerial change and atrocious decisions in the boardroom, complacency and cowardice on the pitch and a riven support that veered between rabid anger with the owners and mute disgust at the decline of the club, this final day performance summed up everything that had gone wrong in the whole season. All that was needed was one goal, but lethargic underachievers unwilling to bother their arses played alongside timid plodders who had no reason to be in the first time, while an impotent management team seemed utterly unable to change anything or inspire the one last push required and the top flight status won with such a flourish by Keegan’s charges 16 years previous, was senselessly squandered. The result was a deserved relegation for a team that ought, if the season had been properly managed, to have finished in the top half of the table.

On May 25^th 2014, Hibernian concluded the Scottish season in traditional fashion, by being ritually humiliated in the final game of the domestic senior campaign, losing the second leg of the SPL promotion / relegation play-off 2-0 to Hamilton Academicals. This made the score 2-2 on aggregate and Hibs went on to complete this sporting self-immolation by losing 4-3 on penalties. As a Newcastle and Hibs fan, this felt far worse than NUFC’s demotion in 2009, even if it was as equally unnecessary and completely preventable, because unlike the Villa Park fiasco, I was actually present to see this limp disintegration with my own eyes. It was hideous from start to finish. Unspeakably so. Sadness and anger still exist in equal measures and I feel far, far worse than I did 5 years ago.

Of course, with Hibs having opened the 2013/2014 home campaign with an iconic 7-0 loss to Malmo in the Europa League qualifiers, dire embarrassing routs at Easter Road are nothing new under the sun. In 2012, this ritual end of season pummelling was courtesy of a 5-1 defeat to Hearts in the Cup final. In 2013, a 3-0 loss to Celtic involved another fruitless trip to Hampden. Presumably, in Terry Butcher’s world, losing 2-0 at home to Hamilton Academicals in the SPL promotion and relegation play-off is a tangible form of progress and a solid base on which to build, as the net number of goals involved in the defeat is diminishing by one each year. Consequently, next season there will undoubtedly be a single goal loss in the same promotion or relegation play-off to endure, providing Hibs can manage to avoid defeats to the likes of Alloa, Cowdenbeath and Dumbarton, never mind the supposed giants in the league, in the shape of Rangers and Hearts and very handy outfits such as Raith Rovers, who won at Easter Road in the Cup in the season just ending of course and Falkirk. For completeness, the division will also include Livingston and Queen of the South. Fir Park no more! Pittodrie no more! Tannadice no more! Parkhead no more!

Let’s be brutally honest about this; relegation, which had only been avoided in the first place because of the points deduction endured by Hearts, is the only appropriate eventuality for any team that loses 2-0 at home to a side from the division below, days after seemingly doing the hard work by beating said lower league side away from home by the same score. The eventual defeat on penalties was almost incidental; long before Kevin Thomson and Jason Cummings, the former being his final touch of the ball as a Hibernian player, had their spot kicks saved, the script had been written. Unlike the glorious evening at Broadwood in 1997 that marked Darren Jackson’s last game as a Hibee, when Hibs came back from the dead to see off Airdrie, only to predictably go down without a whimper the following season, there was to be no get out of jail card.

Ignoring the statistics, the actual pattern of the Hamilton Academicals home game saw the away side deservedly win the prize of a place in the top flight. From the minute Danny Haynes limped off after 8 minutes, the timid performance of the team and dreadful tactics of Butcher played into the visitors’ hands. Jason Scotland is almost 36; however the Hibs defence appeared to believe he was South Lanarkshire’s answer to Lionel Messi. Ryan McGivern didn’t kick the ball straight all day, so giving the ball away to the Accies striker for the opening goal was a predictable error that set the tone for a woeful 120 minutes. Williams ought to have saved the shot, but predictably he didn’t and it squirmed in with barely 12 minutes on the clock. The only hope was abandonment as the incessant downpours left puddles on the pitch. Sadly, even the weather deserted us and by the time Hamilton prevailed, the glorious sunshine that beat down on Leith hinted at pathetic play rather than pathetic fallacy.

From the point Scotland scored onwards, with the near sell-out crowd containing an appreciable number of fair-weather fans who appeared to have turned up expecting to be entertained and ready to complain at the slightest error, the game became as tense and unpleasant as any game I can recall. Hibs offered nothing and Hamilton always seemed to be able to snatch another goal, at least until Kevin Thomson appeared after 68 minutes. Suddenly, with the appearance of someone who could actually pass the ball with a degree of accuracy and a modicum of vision, it looked as if Hibs could actually grab an equaliser. Sadly Butcher, whose cartoon histrionics on the bench failed to hide the presence of a tactical incompetent and frightened paper tiger in the manager’s role, decided to play it safe by taking off Heffernan for Tudur-Jones. Here we were, playing 4-5-1 at home, trying to defend a 1-0 loss to Hamilton Academicals. Predictably, drawing the opposition on drew one last Hail Mary and, with 40 seconds of injury time left, they made it 2-0. That was it; the phoney war of extra time, whereby Williams spent 30 minutes aimlessly launching high balls while the tallest player on the pitch (Tudur-Jones) stood nowhere near the general direction of centre forward, and the penalties were an unnecessary codicil. The steady stream of deserters from the stand and the mute acceptance of our fate at full time, certainly where I was sat in the West Upper, showed that the fans knew the game was up long before the end.

I lost count of the number of conversations I heard on the way out that included variations on the phrase “this has been coming for 3 years now.” This isn’t being wise after the event; it’s an understanding of the fatal culture of incompetence and mismanagement that has been prevalent in boardroom and dug-out at Easter Road for too long now. Sadly I wish I had the confidence to state that things are going to change, but I don’t. I have no belief that this relegation will prove to be the cleansing experience it was for Newcastle in 2009/2010. I simply can’t see the current incumbents rebuilding the squad to provide a realistic promotion challenge next year, despite the positive outcomes of the last 2 demotions and attendant immediate returns to the top flight.

I love going to Easter Road; it is one of the finest football stadia in the world. Setting foot inside it, either stone cold sober after the gloriously life-affirming, invigorating walk down from Waverley, or half cut after several in The Guildford and a taxi down to the Iona for a few extra scoops, makes my heart sing. The Hibernian football shirt is the most beautiful in world football, without question. Sadly, on Sunday May 25^th, those shirts and that famous ground were disgraced by the players who wore them, the management team who comprehensively failed to coach them to an adequate standard and the board of directors who have overseen a disgusting fall from grace by the team. In the absence of Hearts and Rangers, there is simply no reason why Hibs should not be 5^th in the table, behind only Celtic, Aberdeen, Dundee United and Motherwell. The reason Hibs are not, to my eyes, is the joint responsibility of Terry Butcher and the man who appointed him, Rod Petrie.

Now I don’t get to see Hibs anywhere near often enough; this was only my second game of the season, after the superb 3-0 trouncing of Kilmarnock at the end of December (see http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/happy-easter.html). However, I can state now that I was both deeply unhappy with the removal of Pat Fenlon from the manager’s job, not just because I’m also a fan of Bohemian, and even more alarmed by the appointment of Butcher, because I can remember what he was like over twenty years ago when he ran the Mackems. In the same way, I knew that Colin Calderwood would be a disaster as manager at Easter Road on the basis of his previous record and input as NUFC assistant boss to Chris Hughton (now he’d be a wonderful choice as boss!) and he was. It is my take on the current situation that this ridiculous, preventable relegation was caused by an idiot appointing another idiot. Petrie is to blame for giving Butcher the job and Butcher is to blame for failing to get the players to perform adequately.

Following the win over Hearts on January 2^nd, the team won 1 and drew 4 of the remaining 18 league games, including a season-ending run of 13 without a victory; that is simply unacceptable and, as has been stated before, relegation form in any other season. It is simply incomprehensible to me how a centre half, who captained his country, gained 90 international caps and appeared at 3 successive World Cups is utterly unable to organise a team to defend a 2 goal lead over a lower division side, whose attack is led by Jason Scotland…

So, where do we go from here? Well, 14 players have been released, with others being told to accept a pay cut or a free transfer, despite “football finance expert” David Glen of Price Waterhouse Cooper claiming relegation will not unduly affect the club’s finances as Rod Petrie “runs a tight ship.” The great news is that Petrie will remain in an overseer’s role, with Leann Dempster arriving from Motherwell as Chief Executive and Butcher will continue as manager. Fabulous eh? It’s easy to be wise after the event, but Butcher should never have been appointed and Fenlon would never have allowed the club to fall so low. But what can you do; walk away from supporting a club I’ve followed for over 40 years? Not a chance!

I’m next in Scotland for the weekend on 15^th and 16^th August; Teenage Fanclub at Kelvingrove Bandstand on the Friday night as part of my belated 50^th birthday celebrations. There will be a game watched on Saturday 16^th, though which one is yet to be decided. Ideally I’d like to be at Alloa or Dumbarton away, cheering on Hibs to a thumping victory, but there’s a squad to be rebuilt before then. I’m just frightened at the thought of Terry Butcher being allowed to do that…

Oldplay

There hasn’t been a time during the past forty years or so when I’ve been able to state, hand on heart that my abiding, defining passion is football, as opposed to literature, drink or music. Hearing the Spiral Scratch EP by The Buzzcocks on my older cousin John’s DER music centre on my thirteenth birthday in August 1977 changed my musical tastes forever. As a lifelong atheist, the only profoundly spiritual experience I’ve ever had was hearing Teenage Fanclub, the greatest band in the history of the Universe, performing Everything Flows at Newcastle Riverside in 1991. Until I die, I’ll remember being a 15-year-old schoolboy gaping, transfixed in disbelief at the opening lines of Metamorphosis by Kafka. Any Philip Larkin poem, but preferably The Whitsun Weddings or The Old Fools creates an all-encompassing feeling of private euphoria that I have struggled, in two and a half decades of teaching English Literature, to adequately convey.

Yet if I’m honest with myself, none of those experiences outweigh the euphoria and glimpses of the perfect Universe that football has given me: my son Ben saving a penalty against Longbenton Juniors for Newcastle East End, Alu Bangura’s winning goal for Benfield in the Northern League Cup final in May 2007, David Kelly sealing promotion for Newcastle at Grimsby in May 1993. Best of all, playing as an emergency striker on account of a massive injury list, seeing the Hearts of Oak right full back trying to run the clock down by throwing the ball back to his keeper, remembering the poor touches the keeper displayed when fielding backpasses previously, anticipating the ball bouncing slightly higher than normal because of the hard pitch, feeling it hit the top of my right thigh and squirming free as the keeper fails to get it under control, taking a steadying touch with my right foot to take it away from him, then rolling it in to an empty net with my left instep from the angle of the six yard box, before running off behind the goal and punching the air with my left hand. February 3rd 2007: just going into injury time and my first goal in competitive 11-a-side football since June 2001 meant that we were now losing only 5-2. 

Saturday 17^th May was Cup Final day; on a glorious Saturday, a large and expectant crowd, bathed in warm sunshine, saw the favourites overcome nerves and the occasional setback before securing the trophy their sublime football deserved. To clarify, this game wasn’t played at Wembley but at Herrington Burn YMCA, the trophy in question wasn’t the FA Cup but the Billy Lorraine Cup and the victors in this Mill View Working Men’s Club North East Over 40s Fourth Division final were not Wenger’s Arsenal but my team Wallsend Winstons, who saw off Horden Tin Pot Veterans 4-1 to complete a league and cup double. Vince Williams the league secretary presented our captain Aidan with the cup; a great honour, up there with being presented with the league trophy by Alan Shearer live on Football Focus in early April, when the programme came from Wallsend Boys’ Club, whose colours we share and whose pitches we use.

By the time next season kicks off on August 16^th, I will have reached 50 years of age (Monday 11^th if you want to buy me a card) and though I’ll miss our opening game by being away on holiday, I have no intention of retiring just yet; why should I when one of my team mates, Rod, turns 65 in November? When I look back upon my life, I have to say that my 40s have been my favourite decade so far and completing 9 seasons with Wallsend (formerly Heaton) Winstons has been a great part of that, even if my career with them began inauspiciously on 20^th August 2005 with a 6-0 hiding (I’m a goalkeeper incidentally) in the insalubrious East End of Sunderland at the hands of the inappropriately named Welcome Inn. That morning (our games kick off at 10.30 on a Saturday), having been drafted in to play by a work colleague Hezza who played centre back, as our regular keeper was on his holidays, I was introduced to my team mates while we got ready by the side of the pitch as the changing rooms had been vandalised the night before. Fail to prepare; prepare to fail and our boys took a hell of a beating.

I wasn’t to know it then, as I gloomily reflected on a dire performance where 2 of the goals were my fault, 2 others similar defensive calamities and the final pair, a brace of outrageous refereeing blunders, from my seat in the Gallowgate while Newcastle played out a sterile 0-0 with West Ham, but I had seen my future for the next 8 seasons concertinaed and parcelled up in one morning’s sporting incompetence.  However, that was nothing new; there’s several of our lads, good mates like Rod, Bryan and Trevor, who have played for the team for upwards of 15 years who regarded finishing in the top half of the bottom division as a great moral victory.  This is why our 2013/2014 league record of P26 W23 D1 L2 F110 A30 and a 17 point league winning margin, not to mention the Billy Lorraine Cup, is so impossibly special and the best possible way to end my 40s. After 9 years in Division 4, I am fascinated to learn just what Division 3 has to offer us. In all those years, I’ve never played against Houghton Cricketers, Seaham Deneside, Shildon Grey Horse or Newton Aycliffe Cobblers Hall, so I’ve got to test myself against such redoubtable opposition.

The North East Over 40s League has 5 divisions containing, 72 clubs, with a constitution that allows for 80 clubs in total.  Currently, this means that, accounting for substitutes, management and the odd spectator, upwards of 1,000 blokes in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, in the case of 73 year old Freddy Wilkinson of Trimdon Vets, turn out every Saturday morning from August to May for the sake of prolonging our sporting dreams and expressing our love of the game, albeit in a way which is often ugly, crass and brutal, especially when one considers some of the more intransigent outfits from Wearside, which is unavoidable as the demographics of the league show it to be dominated by teams from County Durham and Sunderland in particular. The only recognition of our age is that games are 40 minutes each way and the 5 permitted substitutes, from 7 named, can roll on and roll off.

The most northerly team are Woodhorn Lane Veterans from Ashington in Northumberland, who are the only other team from our side of the Tyne we’ve faced in the season just ended (won 3-1 home and away), while the outfit from the furthest south are Richmond Town, from Yorkshire rather than Surrey thankfully, but still a 129 mile round trip for the Woodhorn lads. One of the rewards we have for promotion is the chance to play Richmond; let’s just hope it is a Saturday and not a midweek game.  On the flip side, we will have a local derby as Darsley Park, one of only 10 sides under the jurisdiction of the Northumberland FA, are in our division next year, giving us a chance to play on the immaculate bowling green at County FA headquarters that they share with Northern League D1 side West Allotment Celtic. It isn’t the same pitch of course, but it’s still an honour to play on such a surface, especially when you save a last minute penalty in a cup tie to help your side win 2-1 as I did.

On the flip side, we are often forced to travel to remote and desolate former Durham pit villages and use the facilities of semi derelict Miners’ Welfare pitches, such as Thornley or Bobby Robson’s home ground at Langley Park, many without running water or electricity, often for reasons of vandalism, where the pitches are scoured by the tyre tracks of trails bikes or scarred by the remnants of fires. Wrecked, torched car bodies abandoned on muddy tracks in West Durham are an all too familiar reminder that the sons and grandsons of players in our league have found themselves so dissociated from society and sport that the league will continue to be played by older and older men as the youngsters take no interest in the chance to find oneself in organised team games. It’s impossibly sad to see pitches and pubs that were once the hub of communities fall into disrepair; neglected and forgotten, soon they’ll fall into disuse.

Then again, places like Marley Potts in Sunderland, nicknamed Fallujah or the adjacent King George V Playing Fields, known uniformly as Dogshit Park, won’t be missed if a tactical nuclear weapon obliterates them. However, they do have the benefit of being familiar locations; in the dream time before sat navs, the Winstons’ Saturday morning caravan, all radios tuned to Brian Matthews’ Sounds of the Sixties on Radio 2, set off from Newcastle for many points south west with only a vague idea of where we were going. A 7-0 loss to Premier Division Darlington Croft in the Villa Real Cup saw the convoy of cars become hopelessly detached and eventually lost, with vehicles serendipitously meeting up at the correct location after endless detours through villages athwart the A68. Even worse, a trip to West Cornforth saw us risk prosecution under child protection laws as 16 of us, already late for kick off, went charging into the changing rooms somewhere near the correct location, only to be told this was the South West Durham Boys’ Brigade Under 11s championship.  By the team we got to West Cornforth, the referee was practising his golf swing in the centre circle and the opposition were lounging around on the grass, playing keepy-ups. Somehow we sheepishly beat them 2-0, when our late arrival had allowed them to claim the game, if they’d so desired. A foggy morning away in Stanley saw us draw 1-1 with Beamish Ball Alley when I couldn’t even see the edge of the penalty area, but it was almost Christmas and both teams were keen to play. The post-match food saw us given meat pies and in one of them, our midfielder Adrian detected an aorta.

Great memories of ridiculous times off the pitch that I’ll remember forever, as our mediocrity on it held less and less to recommend it. Then, last summer, a seismic shift occured; simply by changing our name from Heaton Winstons to Wallsend Winstons, to reflect our change of home pitch from Paddy Freeman’s Park in High Heaton to Bigges Main in Wallsend, we gained some really top quality players. Chris , aged 40 and 2 months, still playing for Wallsend Labour Club on a Sunday morning, arrived to score 46 goals, while never being on the losing side. Mickey, the Yaya Toure of our division and top quality local non-league player, who won Man of the Match in every game he played. Tom, a striker I used to pay money to watch at Benfield and Percy Main in the Northern Alliance, arrived and also scored 46 goals, including a chipped finish in the Billy Lorraine Final that deserved to win the World Cup. Most crucially of all; Hallsy, a proper goalkeeper with 20 years’ experience of the Northern Alliance, who I watched play with such distinction at Percy Main. I was honoured to spend two thirds of the season on the sidelines watching him showing how it should be done. Best of all, whenever we got 3-0 up, he’d signal to come off so I could get some time on the pitch. Coming on for the last 15 minutes of the cup final after Tom’s wonder goal, with the shattered opposition staring bleakly at the ground as the realisation of inevitable defeat struck home, was definitely the most emotional I’ve felt on a football field. 

The French Algerian novelist Albert Camus is credited with the quotation; all that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football. I’d often thought it a trite and clichéd expression, but reflecting on the 9 years I’ve spent with Winstons, I have to agree with the sentiments, especially as Camus was a keeper himself, but probably not a shit one like me…

An interview with Roddy Doyle

PUSH magazine #11 is out next week; available for £3 via PayPal from joe.england64@gmail.com and I suggest you buy it, not just the short story I've got in there. In issue #10, I had a story that I'll be sharing on my literary blog http://gilipollez.wordpress.com/ next week, but until then, here's an interview I did with Roddy Doyle that's in issue #10.

Roddy Doyle, born 8 May 1958, is Ireland’s leading contemporary novelist and following the death of Seamus Heaney, it could be argued he is the country’s foremost literary figure. He is the author of ten novels for adults, seven books for children, seven stage plays and screenplays, a prose memoir of his parents’ lives and innumerable short stories, including ongoing episodes in the celebrated Two Pints series, in which two emblematic middle aged Dubs meet over a few jars to chew the fat over current affairs. Set in his beloved home turf of north inner Dublin, where he taught in a secondary school after graduating from UCD, Doyle’s first novel, The Commitments was published in 1987 and allowed him to introduce his readers to the Rabbitte family in a series of novels that became known as The Barrytown Quartet. This latest addition to his canon being 2013’s The Guts, that told of Jimmy Rabbitte’s battle with stomach cancer, while The Commitments is now on the West End stage as a musical, recreating the nuances and travails of Dublin working class life in the 1980s economic recession. His next project is to co-author Roy Keane’s latest volume of memoirs, which will no doubt be an intriguing read, if Doyle’s Chelsea supporting roots come to the fore. PUSH spoke to Roddy Doyle in January 2014.

Other than the evocation of Civil War era Ireland and Jazz Age America in The Last Roundup trilogy, your novels are mainly set in a strictly defined geographical area from of north Dublin, perhaps unfairly described as extending from Parnell Square to Glasnevin Cemetery, and often in the here and now. Would you say your role as a writer is to chronicle the shifting tectonic plates of contemporary Irish life, such as allowing the reader to the 55 year old Paula Spencer seeing The White Stripes live in Phoenix Park for instance, or the changing racial demographics of Irish society in the first decade of the new millennium, as shown in The Deportees collection of short stories, by holding a mirror to society? Or do you see yourself more as providing a blueprint or template indication of how you’d like Irish society to evolve?

I’d be very reluctant to assert that I had any kind of a role, other than to write.  Yes, most of my work is set on the northside of Dublin, in the here and now.  But that’s because I like that part of the world and I’m quite content in the present day.  I don’t feel I have a mission.  I come up with the character, say Paula Spencer, and I gradually try to see and describe the world as she would see it; I choose her words.  This isn’t to trivialise my work; I take what I do very seriously.  But my attention is on word by word, line by line, page by page progression.   Often, when I’m finished a novel or story – sometimes quite a long time after – it occurs to me that there was a theme hanging over me as I wrote.  It struck to me, but only as I was finishing the last book of The Last Roundup trilogy, that I was writing about identity, personal and national – and who controls that identity and its definition.

You first introduced the reader to Jimmy Rabbitte Jr in The Commitments in 1987.  In 2013 he was back under the microscope in The Guts. Looking at that time frame; which of those Irelands, the 1980s era of mass unemployment at home and relentless waves of emigration by young Irish people, or the current situation, whereby all Irish mainstream political parties appear to have no answer to endless future years of post-Celtic Tiger penury and grinding domestic  poverty, is the better Ireland? How have things changed during Jimmy Rabbitte Jr’s adult years?

I don’t think one is any better, or worse, than the other.  Nostalgia, which seemed to be the almost immediate response to the economic downturn, is lazy and sentimental.  Things weren’t better, or any more virtuous, because Garrett Fitzgerald (flint faced, right wing Taoiseach from 1982-1987 and unsmiling proponent of moral rectitude - IC) was in power.  I don’t pine for more innocent times and I thought the Tiger years had a lot going for them – before the brief madness.  The fundamental difference between 1980s Ireland and now is, I think, expectation.  In the ‘80s, poverty and deprivation were no surprise; we were living in Ireland, after all – a failed state, the basket case of Europe – so we expected nothing better.  Then things changed, probably for the better – and the new poverty is a shock.  It’s stunning.  Or, at least it seemed to be 2009 and for some years after. 

Undeniably the portrayals of the various members of the Rabbitte family in The Barrytown Quartet are deeply affectionate; one of my favourites being Jimmy Sr retelling the plot of David Copperfield (“there’s this cunt Mr Micawber…”). It has been said, and I agree, readers actually love the Rabbittes, like we love our relations or neighbours, but other families you’ve written about, such as the Spencers, firstly in Family and then The Woman Who Walked into Doors or the Smarts in A Star Called Henry are often grossly dysfunctional and alarmingly abusive. As you also wrote a portrait of your parents in Rory and Ita, how important to you is the concept of the family?

I’ve never seen family as a concept – more a solid thing, really; a fact.  We may try to escape but even that – the urge to escape – proves the family’s importance.  Some families work, and others don’t – and others still do and don’t; probably most, actually.  Plonk a fictional character into a family and you have, immediately, characters, and the potential for farce, tragedy, and everything in between, and at the same time.   Families are the story-teller’s perfect tool.

You are a professed atheist and expressed unequivocal support for the repeal on the ban on divorce in Ireland, which had been enshrined in law by Eamon De Valera’s 1937 Irish constitution, as well as aligning yourself with other socially progressive movements in Irish society throughout your career as a novelist. Do you see this as the responsibility of the writer in contemporary Ireland? Without categorising you as a non-patriarchal Socialist patrician, would your sympathy be more with HG Wells or Joseph Conrad, bearing in mind the latter’s comments; “Wells does not love humanity but thinks he can improve it; I love humanity but I know it is unimprovable?”

I wouldn’t burden any writer with any responsibility other than to write.  I don’t feel a need to convert anyone to anything.  I’m comfortable in my atheism in Ireland today but have no interest in convincing others that it is the way to go.  Ireland has become quite a free, open society, and I like it – despite the fuck-ups, maybe even because of them.  I’d probably drop somewhere between Wells and Conrad but I don’t think I’d be interested in having a pint with either of them.

Your single proviso for this interview was that you’d only talk about books you’ve already published; hence the intriguing Mr Keane is off the agenda. However, can you reveal whether there are any further visits planned to the lives of Paula Spencer or any of the other Rabbittes, so tantalisingly alluded to in The Guts? Are your experiences in the theatre with the musical version of The Commitments guiding you towards further adventures in drama? Perhaps a joint venture with legendary folk virtuoso Christy Moore, who Jimmy Jr experiences an epiphany towards when listening to him at The Electric Picnic (Ireland’s celebrated annual music festival in Stradbally, Co. Laois), could be in the pipeline…

I’ve written ten novels but only one, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, stands alone.  I’ve always gone back to earlier characters and I’m likely to do it again.  I loved the experience of writing The Commitments’ musical script, and experiencing the rehearsals.  But that is because, at least in part, I saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime event.  I can’t see myself doing it again.  But I wouldn’t be closed to the possibility.  Essentially, I’m a novelist.  If I stray from that, it’s because I see the other writing as an adventure.

Finally, as your success as a writer enabled you to quit the chalkface and dedicate yourself to your writing, I wonder do you ever miss teaching? Or has your vocation transferred from a desire to impart knowledge and improve minds in the classroom to a need to do that via your written works?

I don’t miss teaching.  I co-founded a writing centre for children and young people, called Fighting Words, here in Dublin.  I’m there now, as I write this, in the company of a group of teenagers who meet here on Wednesday afternoons to write.  So, I’m here one or two afternoons a week, and that gives me my teaching fix.  It’s a bit like being a grandparent, I’d imagine.  I get the company of the kids for a few hours, and I can throw a bit of hard-won wisdom at them – and then they go home.  And so do I.

In Through The Out Door

Sat in the Directors’ Box at St. James Park, I felt strange. Only vaguely engaged by the game being played out in front of me, my thoughts turned from events on the pitch to the knots of fans directly opposite in the East Stand, passionately engaged in the struggle for their team’s future, many of whom nonetheless drifted away long before the contest was finally over, the enormous swathes of empty seats in the stadium and the collection of mainly middle aged men, largely attired as if for a wedding reception, who sat around me, idly chatting, networking and luxuriating in the reflected glamour that a seat in corporate hospitality afforded them, rather than paying attention to the contest that had ostensibly drawn us there. They’d enjoyed a sumptuous pre match repast of Homemade Northumberland Broth, served with a Fresh Homemade Bread Roll, followed by Supreme of Chicken served with a Panache of Fresh Vegetables, Grated Dauphinoise Potatoes in a Sun Blushed Tomato, Shallot and Pancetta Sauce, topped off with Chocolate Mousse Tart swimming in Bailey’s Cream Raspberry Coulis and Crème Anglaise, while I’d been grafting on the far side of the stadium, selling programmes in return for zero financial reward, save the chance to hob nob with the beautiful people after the game.

Sadly, the Northern League Cup Final between Whitley Bay and Marske United went to extra time and by the time the unfancied side from the North Riding had claimed the trophy with a controversial 120^th minute penalty, it was pushing 10 o’clock and so most people cleared off straight after the final whistle. I’d guess I was halfway back to the coast on the Metro by the time the Presentation was over. Still, despite the result, being among a crowd of 1,503 devotees of the local non-league game, was a wonderful occasion and affirmed to me that the Northern League, whose 125^th season this game was the climax to, is the best place to watch football I can think of. How much more satisfying it was to be in SJP on Tuesday 6^th May than it had been on Saturday 3^rd when, swimming against the tide as ever, I’d skirted cabals of the disaffected early departed to patent the 84^th minute walk-in.

It is now a month since I last blogged about Newcastle United. During this period of time, there has been nothing remotely worthy of celebration related to the club. While 6 successive defeats took place on the park, the litany of ludicrous weekly press conference witterings by Pardew veered from farcical to beyond parody. It is bad enough that his Friday banalities ruin the weekend for Newcastle supporters across the region and beyond, even before a goal has been needlessly conceded, without giving these outpourings of verbal effluent any degree of credibility by repeating them here. The man is a joke and he talks errant nonsense, but replacing him with another useful idiot seems to me a pointless act while Ashley remains in place. We would only be exchanging one simpering clown for another. Indeed it should also be unfortunately recognised that, despite the fact huge sections of the support have been roaring on Stoke City and Crystal Palace in the fervent hope NUFC could end up in the bottom half of the table, as a top 10 finish has, somehow, been secured, the manager has sickeningly earned himself a bonus for completing the task set for him before the season’s start. Consequently, despite the fact that pessimism related to next season’s presumed relegation is already approaching fever pitch among the support, though it is a fact that every summer since the advent of the 10/11 campaign, NUFC fans have assumed that we are going down (with the notable exception of 12/13 when we very nearly did), Pards is going absolutely nowhere; literally and metaphorically. This is despite the fact that the only reason the Mackems are staying up, regardless of their insane end of season away form, is that NUFC managed to present Poyet’s team with 6 points, undoubtedly demonstrating those on Wearside had a better season of it, regardless of league positions, than those on Tyneside. Unfortunately, in business, as in sport, people tend not to get sacked for doing the job their boss asked of them. In sport, as well as society, the actual point is we need to get rid of the bosses and replace them with the workers; this has never been more apparent than after the mealy-mouthed, contemptuous press release that was released to coincide with Lee Charnley’s appointment as Managing Director. I defy you not to read this incredible tissue of horseshit with imagining yourself as a pitchfork wielding medieval peasant hell-bent on slaying the evil lord of the manor…

“The Club has never been in such a stable and healthy financial position, which gives us the best possible platform from which to grow. I am confident that with our dedicated, hardworking and loyal employees, together with Alan Pardew and his backroom staff, we will progress the Club, both on and off the field over the coming years. Our immediate priority of course is to finish this season as strongly as possible. Our minimum target for this campaign was a top ten finish, but I can assure our supporters that everyone at Newcastle United will do their utmost to ensure the Club finishes in the highest league position it can. At the beginning of the season all our staff and players were incentivised should we finish in tenth position and above, and our commitment to achieving this will continue right up until the final whistle on 11th May. To their credit, the players, led by the captain, agreed to this incentive scheme despite our 16th place finish last season. Looking ahead to future seasons, our primary focus will remain the Premier League. Our preparations for the summer transfer window have already begun of course, and our challenge is to make sure we spend the funds we have available in a careful and considered way in order to ensure that we get the maximum benefit from every pound we invest in the squad. We will continue to operate in a financially responsible manner and live within our means. This Club is financially strong and there is money to spend if the deal is right and we are confident a player can add quality to the squad. That said, we will not pay over the odds or make knee-jerk decisions. Every player we sign represents a major investment and mistakes are costly which is why we will continue to be prudent in our transfer dealings. This is the reality of a well-run football club like ours. We can be proud that we already meet, and in fact exceed, the requirements of UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations and in our latest set of published accounts we recorded a profit for our third consecutive year. We will continue to manage our finances in this sustainable manner and will not accrue debt in order to achieve short-term gains. It is also important that we don't over-promise and under-deliver for our supporters, players and staff. False expectations lead to disappointment and frustration, hence why we will keep our transfer business confidential and will not be drawn into commenting on the media speculation and rumour that exists in this digital world. As a board we will continue to make the final decisions on all player transfers. Clearly, however, the manager and his team have a very significant involvement in such decisions and will be instrumental in making recommendations in relation to the squad. Our transfer policy and strategy is very clear and will remain unchanged. We will focus on identifying and recruiting young players whose best years are ahead of them, which in nearly all cases means players in their early to mid-20s and not beyond. We don't look at transfer windows in isolation, but rather as a full trading year, and our intention for the first team is to sign one or two players per year to strengthen the squad. The Club has long been focused on keeping football affordable for our supporters and that will remain a priority for us. Our average attendance for league games so far this season has been more than 50,000, making us the third best supported club in England. We want to see St James' Park full throughout the season and we will continue to operate a ticketing policy and pricing structure that keeps Newcastle United one of the most affordable clubs in the Premier League, encouraging family attendance and rewarding our most loyal supporters with long-term price guarantees. We are also committed to our current strategy in relation to communication between the Club and its supporters. At the beginning of the season we launched a new Fans Forum, with members representing our diverse fanbase. It has been an open, honest and productive forum and it will continue to be our primary means of direct supporter communication and engagement. Of our three core income streams - broadcast, matchday and commercial - it is only our commercial income that we are able to affect to any great degree, especially given our commitment to keeping ticket prices affordable for our fans. We have made great strides in this respect recently, having secured the most lucrative sponsorship deal in the Club's history, with Wonga. We are delighted to have them as a partner from a commercial perspective but also because of their desire to work closely with our supporters and in our local community. This is our vision and strategy for the years ahead. The purpose of this statement is to communicate with our supporters in an open and transparent manner and we hope that it provides a clear outline of our intentions. We all want to see Newcastle United improve, but we are convinced that the best route to achieving this is to do so sustainably, building each season without risking the financial health and stability of the Club. I can assure supporters that the board and everyone associated with the Club aim to make Newcastle United the best it can be, pound for pound.”

I don’t know about you, but every syllable of that communication makes me feel ill; from the patronising tone, to the clear indication that the only signings we’ll make are loan ones, to the further confirmation that both Pards is a powerless puppet and that Ashley will continue to do what the hell he wants with the club, without deigning to explain or justify any of his actions at all. It’s precisely this kind of contemptuous, high-handed, dismissive communication, on top of the litany of other sleights against the club and the support, which is starting to turn everything related to Newcastle United completely poisonous. Ashley has been a toxic, malign influence for years now. Pards has gone from despised crony to sympathetic victim, via a brief period as assumed tactical genius (that should read opportunistic chancer), to playing the role of vacuous clown with the natural verve he now brings to the role. The players, many of whom are highly talented professionals, are neither coached nor motivated, intrinsically or extrinsically, to produce the kind of performances of which they are capable.

In truth, NUFC’s squad, with Cabaye, could have been 6^th, without Cabaye but with Remy, could have been 8^th, but without either of them, it has only maintained 9^th spot because of a great pre-Christmas run and the shortcomings of others. Prior to Cardiff, the team had collected 4 wins and 1 draw from the previous 18 Premier League games; 13 points in almost half a season. The fact that nobody seems to care or accept responsibility, much less display an element of contrition relating to such appalling statistics, is why the support is starting to turn. Or so it seems anyway…

One of the ways this lack of engagement has been demonstrated is by the sheer amount of free tickets knocking around for home games. As I pointed out in my last NUFC blog, it took a superhuman effort to palm off a freebie for the Man United game, when I was at Heaton Stannington 2 Northallerton Town 1. I didn’t even try to get rid of the half a dozen unused ones I was offered for the Swansea game; what would be the point of offering them to friends or acquaintances? Who in their right mind would even thank you for giving them the chance to see that? Certainly I was far happier watching Longbenton see off West Allotment Reserves 2-0 in a Northern Alliance Division 2 fixture. Amazingly though, more than 50,000 people are still attending first team fixtures at St. James’ Park. I can’t even begin to explain why, much less understand that statistic.

The Monday night we lost 3-0 to Arsenal, I was watching Team Northumbria 0 West Auckland 3 in Northern League Division 1; decent game actually. In the hours and days following the predictable spineless capitulation at the Emirates, a campaign grew on social media for fans to stage a walk out at the Cardiff game to show their disapproval of Ashley, Pards or both. The suggestion was that after an hour, people should turn their backs on the game and leave the stadium. As ever with these sorts of suggestions, such as the infamous, stillborn Toon Poznan protest of 2011, there is always an element of concern with the legitimacy of those suggesting action. However, the proposal seemed to strike a chord and support for it among the on-line community grew as the week progressed. Here was something that was organic, spontaneous and from the grassroots; someone had suggested it and, by a process of Social Media Darwinism, it seemed to be gaining momentum. Quite how the success of such a protest could be measured was another matter entirely of course.

On Thursday 1^st May, NUST held their first long-promised public meeting since their January 22^nd AGM; it wasn’t the previously publicised “comedy” night with Gavin Webster, whose articles in The Mag I found far less amusing than Tony Pearson’s, but instead a forum to discuss Ashley’s proposed sale of a patch of land across from the Gallowgate that the Shepherd regime had earmarked as the potential site for a hotel and casino development, with the potential to further build upwards in that stand. The fact that NUFC are seeking to sell the land by itself, without planning permission, suggests two things; firstly the club has absolutely no interest in extending the ground and secondly the club’s motivation for the sale seems to be a desire to rid itself of an asset for a quick buck, as any land sale with planning permission would be more lucrative, but perhaps harder to achieve because of the particular niche market for the development mooted. 

In addition, it means the club will have zero further involvement in the land if and when it is sold, which is why NUST are seeking to make the land an Asset of Community Value which, while not stopping any sale, is a way of putting some pressure on potential developers to think of the consequences of building on that spot.
 

The meeting took place in The Mining Institute in Neville Hall and attracted an attendance of around 35, with an awful lot of scalp on show. While Supporters Direct spokesman Kevin Rye, a contributor to the Baltic Publications title FC Business gave a little homily about how hard he works and how much he has achieved, I looked around the room and estimated I knew about a third of those gathered, several of whom may not have had any involvement with current or former Baltic Publications titles. When the meeting broke up, the suggestion was to attend The Telegraph for a post-meeting pint, but as I’d been feeling vibes that suggested some of those gathered actually hated me more than Mike Ashley, we headed for The Bridge to watch Gateshead bravely hold on for a draw at Grimsby in their play-off game and for a debrief on what my companions and I had felt to be a productive, positive and worthwhile meeting.

I still had the caveat that I did not understand why the NUST Board had acted unilaterally in their response to this matter and not consulted with the ordinary membership before deciding on their course of action, but that could be seen as a procedural rather than a philosophical point.  However, the abiding feeling I had was positivity; if NUST could keep their promise of regular meetings with members and adopt a policy of openness, engagement and campaigning for change, then it is possible that they could have a central role to play in the fight for this club’s future, despite the atrocious faux pas related to the Fans Forum that leaves NUFC Fans United as the only credible conduit between the owners and support. Consequently, I went to bed on Thursday night in a contented frame of mind. On Friday morning however, came email news of the hijacking of the 60 minute walk-out campaign by NUST and the two former Baltic Publications titles, in favour of a 69 minute walk-out, as apparently this was seen, by whom I’m not sure, as a more significant time as it coincided with our last trophy. Why not 27 for our last title, 55 for our last FA Cup or even 07 to recognise when Scott Parker proudly waved the Inter Toto goblet above his head?

It must be stated immediately that at no point during Thursday’s NUST meeting was a 69 minute walk-out ever mentioned. However, less than 12 hours later, a social media firestorm had erupted that set fans at each other’s throats and subsequently, I believe, reduced the impact of the walk-out. As has been stated previously, the positive aspects of the proposed 60 minute walk-out were that it was spontaneous, organic and from the grassroots, giving a clear and unambiguous message that an element of the support was unhappy with the current state of affairs at the club. The crass tactical error of NUST’s dirigistic, Leninist insistence on a 69 minute walk-out was not only in muddying the waters, but the arbitrary imposition of their will and their agenda, in the face of something that had gained only positive comments in the days before NUST’s breakfast email on Friday. In effect, it seems to me that NUST, for the sake of media publicity, were perhaps unwittingly responsible for upsetting a section of our support and allowing many others to state, with some justification, that this is the problem with our fanbase; we can never agree on anything. Certainly if NUST insist on keeping the spirit of Gordon McKeag alive and aloof, then that will certainly be the case for a considerable while longer.

Personally, while I supported the aims of those who had announced they’d be observing the 60 minute walk-out, I had not intended to be anywhere near the Cardiff game. Killingworth Station 1 Blyth Town 4 in the Northern Alliance Premier Division was my game of the day, having carried my union banner at the Tyneside May Day March and Rally. However, full time at West Moor saw an express bus to the town pull up and, fifteen minutes later, I was walking into the Gallowgate with Newcastle 1-0 up. It was the first time I had entered the ground after the opening of the gates since May 13^th 1989, when the dying embers of a 1-1 draw with Millwall that marked the end of an appalling campaign that had ended in relegation in last place, were enjoyed by around 400 hundred of us who’d decided not to join with the 14k others who’d paid for the pleasure of spending a sunny afternoon singing Sack The Board!  

Saturday May 3^rd 2014 has an altogether different atmosphere than the game a quarter of a century previously. While intending to take a seat in the row behind where I used to sit, on the way there the first action I saw was Remy putting Newcastle 2-0 up. The photograph I took from the lower Gallowgate shows just how full the Milburn and Leazes stands were so late in the game, as was the East Stand. It seemed to me the only significant departures had been from the Strawberry Corner of the Gallowgate, which contained significant numbers of empty seats. However it must be conceded that certainly no more than 10% of the crowd had left the ground before the final whistle. Obviously I too left at that point; watching a lap of honour was not something I was prepared to do, even if I had just seen 2 goals in 5 minutes for absolutely nothing. If the fact that 50,000 turn up regularly surprises me, then I am absolutely stunned by estimates of 8,000 people staying behind to allow the players to complete a lap of honour. And I’m one of those in May 1987 who demanded the players come out to see us after we’d lost 3-0 at home to Charlton Athletic, but had secured top flight survival…

Being objective, I felt the atmosphere in the ground during the Cardiff game was surprisingly equable; though the unstinting positivity of Gateshead’s fans on the Sunday in their memorable 3-1 win over Grimsby put the NUFC support in context. Indeed, so did the wish of Gateshead’s players to pass the ball around and not aimlessly hoof it up field like Pards has his lot doing. Amazing to think that Gary Mills is exactly the same age as the hapless incumbent at SJP; I wonder what the relative approval ratings of supporters would be. Actually, I don’t need to wonder at all.

What are we to conclude from Saturday’s events? Well, it is an undeniable fact that whether you left after 60 minutes, 69 minutes, full time or the lap of honour or even if you didn’t attend the game at all, we are all Newcastle United fans of equal worth, equal validity and entitled to an equal say in our club. Perhaps the walk-out would have been more popular if the message had not been confused by NUST’s announcement or if the team had been losing. However, we will never know if this is the case. It is instructive to any and all of us who think the time is ripe for revolution among the support that perhaps we have a long, long way to go. In 1989, the first home game after relegation saw nearly 26,000 attend a 5-2 victory over Leeds United, whilst a boycott of games under the then McKeag Regime was in place; how naïve some of us were in trusting the Hall family to philanthropically save the club. In 2009, the first home game post relegation saw us defeat Reading 3-0 with a Shola hat trick in front of 37,000. If there is to be a mass desertion through anger, apathy or any other emotion, I would suggest this is the figure that would indicate action or indeed inaction has replaced grumbling. Gateshead overcoming Cambridge at Wembley could be crucial in this instance.

However, the main lesson to be drawn from this is the one I’ve been trumpeting all along; whoever manages or plays for Newcastle United, or wherever the club finishes in the table is immaterial under the present ownership. We need Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though I would be prepared to accept 51% as a transitional demand.  I don’t expect this to happen overnight, but remember Ashley has been here since 2007; Newcastle United have been around since 1892. Our day will come.