I didn’t
read Martin Hardy’s first book, Touching
Distance; I mean I wanted to, having known Martin (as an acquaintance and not
a friend I would have to admit) since we both contributed to The Mag in the early 90s, long before he
went to university, never mind became a journalist. The thing was; I just
couldn’t. The subject matter, Newcastle United’s glorious failure to win the
Premier League title in 1995/1996, still hurts more than two decades later.
Actually hurt is an inadequate description; it remains a gaping, open wound and
running sore that may never heal. Whenever I think back to that campaign, it’s
not the wonderful, attacking football that I recall; it’s the feeling of numb
desolation that overpowered my every waking moment from the Blackburn Rovers
loss on Easter Monday onwards. The paralysing realisation that I was utterly
powerless in the face of impending, inevitable doom that arrived, not when Ian
Woan equalised for Forest in the penultimate game, but on the final Sunday as a
spent, noble side laboured vainly for a draw at home to Spurs at the same time
as Manchester United breasted the tape at little more than a jog with a 3-0
cuffing of a supine Middlesbrough. May 5th 1996; I think that’s the
day, aged almost 32, when I stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings.
It’s probably also the time I knew I’d already stopped actively loving
professional football.
However
Martin’s second book (is it too dreadful to refer to it as a Hardy annual?), Tunnel of Love, which chronicles the
misadventures of Newcastle United from the day we signed Shearer until the day
he relegated us thirteen years later, is right up my street. It encompasses a period of time when
frustration with my club was replaced with contempt, hatred and the first steps
on the road to the state of blessed indifference I’ve finally found for myself
these past half dozen years or so. That said; it’s always great to wallow in
nostalgia, even if the primary emotions to be rediscovered are scorn, anger and
rage.
Martin is a
decent writer; perhaps he doesn’t have the natural flair of George Caulkin, who
honed and polished his craft with indulgent employers at The Times, but in comparison to the dreary doggerel of Alan Oliver
and Ian Murtagh, or the illiterate babbling of Lee Ryder, it is fair to say
Martin is the second best NUFC supporting football writer out there.
Straightaway, I have to say that I did find a few niggles with the book; ones
so minor that the casual, non-obsessive reader wouldn’t give them a second
thought. This book is a solid, non-statistical guide and comprehensive if not
encyclopaedic account of the personalities involved. However, as one with an
obsessive recollection of the minutiae of NUFC’s performance over the years,
the occasional inaccuracy does grind, but not as much as the proof-reading
errors put this particular English teacher’s back up. I’m being captious of
course. That said, at least Martin was down at Oakwell supporting Rafa’s boys
when I was in the house writing this!
Of course
one of the most obvious things to say about Martin’s book is that none of the
events are a surprise; the chronology isn’t just in the public domain, many
(most?) of the readers will have lived, not just lived through, the events
mentioned. Martin’s skill is in guiding the reader back to the time, to the
instant, when you remember the sights, the sounds and even the smells of the
game or off the pitch milestone in question.
As well as the events being familiar, most (all?) of us in the primary
target demographic have a clear sense of who are the heroes and who are the
villains in this Tyneside Passion Play. Again, it will be no surprise to learn
that Hardy’s account reinforces rather than challenges the assumptions we have
about our club.
The Halls
and Freddy Shepherd come out of this book badly; very badly indeed. Avaricious,
petty, greedy, small town conmen turned mega rich multi-millionaire global
players. Treating the club as their personal fiefdom and the money the club
acquired as chump change to be squandered as they saw fit. Don’t worry though,
the circus that followed don’t escape withering contempt either; everything the
previous owners were guilty of is repeated, but without the veneer of regional
populism. As ever with Newcastle United,
it isn’t simply a story of 11 blokes kicking a ball around with varying degrees
of competence, it is the back story of vicious machinations that wouldn’t be
out of place in a Jacobean revenge tragedy that command the most inches of
print. That said revelations such as John Hall giving Bobby Robson dog’s abuse
in the airport after we lost the 2004 UEFA semi-final to Marseilles can still
serve to disgust and appal in equal measures. What right did the sordid
megalomaniac have in speaking like that? Mind, the level of contempt is cranked
up to 11 or more when it comes to the way Llambias and his cronies talked to
Keegan, but we all knew that anyway.
When it
comes to matters on the pitch, at least there are some heroes among the
scoundrels, layabouts and fools who drank deeply from the seemingly bottomless
well of liquid gold on Barrack Road. The Entertainers and Robson’s sides of
01-04, including Bellamy astonishingly enough, come out of it well, but we knew
they would. Given, Lee, Shearer, Speed and Harper; great players and even greater
men, deserving the epithet club legends. I’d advise Michael Owen fans to avoid
this book; likewise those with a soft spot for Alain Goma, Jean-Alain Boumsong
or Laurent Robert.
Perhaps the
only grey areas explored in the book are in the depictions of the varying
fortunes of those who occupied the manager’s chair at SJP. There is initially
absolute outrage at the vile manoeuvrings of the Hall Shepherd alliance, with
help of their corporate hitman Mark Corbidge, in squeezing Kevin Keegan out of
the club during 1996/1997 to ease the share flotation and, perhaps not
coincidentally, make them rich as Croesus. With Kenny Dalglish there is a sense
he was allowed to get on with it, but then sacked on a whim. Gullit is Gullit;
vain, arrogant, incompetent and utterly lacking self-awareness of his
failings. Allardyce is a fatter version
of Gullit and Souness a Scotch one. The three of them would make great basket
cases in a Magpies’ managerial balloon debate. Glen Roeder, in contrast, is a
highly personable bloke, still displaying gratitude for a job he was never
suited for, almost a decade later.
The strange
one is Kevin Keegan. I don’t think many
(any?) of us were expecting his return in January 2008. Let’s be honest about
this, it wasn’t a great idea; sure he could have come back as Director of
Football, Global Ambassador, Director of Player Recruitment, but not with any
responsibility for the team. That said, his tactical masterstroke of playing
Owen behind Viduka and Martins meant the season ended on a real high. At that
point, the undermining of his role began in earnest and, as I alluded to at the
start, reading the detail at almost a decade distant still makes the blood
boil. Unfortunately, what we are missing is the seemingly reclusive Keegan’s
take on things. Unlike his first reign where his infectious personality
enveloped the whole region, he is a two-dimensional, peripheral figure;
glimpsed in monochrome not the technicolour of his previous tenure. That’s sad,
but probably understandable.
The
difficult one is Bobby Robson; it is almost as if his death has erased any
notion of errors he made. Not only signing Carl Cort or Lee Bowyer, but in
selling Nobby Solano and Gary Speed far too soon. Indeed Robson’s biggest error
was in not accepting the reality of time’s winged chariot; there was no
succession planning. If only he’d agreed to go upstairs in summer 2004, with
Shearer or even Steve Clarke (in his pre-jakey incarnation) groomed to take
over, things would have been very different. Instead, Shearer came in far too
late, utterly unprepared and seemed to believe banning mobile phones and flip
flops, as well as shouting, would keep us up. It didn’t and the book ends, post
Shearer, on a July afternoon in east London, where Newcastle have just lost 6-1
to Orient. As good a point as any to leave things until the next volume I’d
wager.
That right Martin?
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