Project Mediocrity

Newcastle United's season is finally over; thank goodness...

And so, bearing in mind the ramifications of any potential legal action from Bournemouth regarding the malfunctioning goal-line technology that gifted Villa the point that eventually did for the Cherries, we have finally reached the end of the Premier League season. Unlike the Championship, whose dramatic final evening provided a torrent of incessant thrilling entertainment that ended with the tragic, unjust relegation of Wigan Athletic, the Premier League crumpled into inertia like a slowly deflating balloon on a sombre and shallow Sunday afternoon that inspired me to watch third team cricket at Crook v Washington and then Willington v Burnmoor; despite the Orwellian closing sequence of Match of the Day, that could have been un homage to Cecil B DeMille, such was its unnecessary, vainglorious exuberance, I think I made the right choice. Hence, with the weather set fair for Saturday and Chelsea playing Arsenal, the FA Cup final can safely be ignored in favour of Felling v Tynemouth in the Banks Salver North Group and regular updates from Easter Road, where the Hibees take on Killie, nigh on three months before the Jambos get to soil their boots in the lower division. Anybody say Natural Order just then?

Getting back to the Premier League, the first question I have about the campaign just ended is how on earth did Manchester City finish as low as second? Following the restart, they played simply the most beguiling, intricate, and effective football imaginable.  David Silva’s departure is a huge shame, not just for City fans, but admirers of fine players everywhere. In contrast, worthy Champs Liverpool looked somewhat unconvincing with the title in the bag. The body language of the enduringly grumpy and selfish Mo Salah suggests he’s wanting away and unless Klopp sorts out his main striking option, in whatever fashion, I can see the title returning to Eastlands with the rest nowhere in 2020/2021. Perhaps Joelinton will end up at Anfield; I hear there are vacancies for turnstile operators…

The second, perhaps unanswerable, question I have about 2019/2020 is, how do we interpret the level of performance of a manager whose team accrued 44 points from 38 games? According to many Newcastle United fans, if you do this and your name is Rafa Benitez, it’s the equivalent to winning the Champions’ League, but if you’re Steve Broooth it is on the cusp between a sackable and a hanging offence. Barmy eh? In the last 3 seasons, Newcastle United have finished on 44 points in 10^th position with a goal difference of -8, 45 points in 13^th with a -6 goal difference and, this time around, 44 points in 13^th with a -20 goal difference. If we ignore Benitez’s statistics from the end of the 2015/2016 season when he failed to prevent the club being relegated, his average finishing position is 11.5 with 44.5 points and a -7 GD. Despite what the blinkered devotees of his sterile anti-football would have you believe, it isn’t evidence of an earth-shattering performance, though neither was Broooth’s debut season as awful as some would contend.

Comparing the two managers should be an absolute non-starter, but the decline of Benitez’s stock since he was shown the door at Real Madrid makes a more than cursory investigation a valid one. In short, Benitez has a better record with Newcastle over complete seasons than Broooth has; there isn’t much in it, but the evidence is there. If you were so minded, there is the counter argument that Broooth’s performance in the FA Cup is more impressive; while that’s not saying much, the pitiful surrender at home to Man City in the quarter finals didn’t garner much sympathy or understanding among the support to inspire anyone to advance such a position. Both managers have had dismal aspects to their stewardship; Benitez losing the opening 5 home fixtures of 18/19 was an absolute disgrace that his apologists swept under the carpet, while the shameful hammerings Broooth oversaw (Leicester home and away, Arsenal away and City away) displayed his inability to shut up shop for damage limitation, a particular specialism of Benitez, while the even more depressing impotent performances against also-rans (the Villa away non-performance, the second half surrender at Watford and the shot-shy shit shows away to Burnley and Palace) pay testament to the Big Lad’s failure to respond to events or change tactics, even for injuries, which is why Broooth will never be and has never been, a top quality manager. Then again, Benitez was utterly inflexible in his tactical devotion to caution first football and once he’d taken the strop over his derisory £6m annual salary offer, there weren’t exactly dozens of top European clubs clamouring for his services.

Personality wise, Broooth is avuncular and clubbable, especially among bibulous media types of a certain age who respond to his disarming honesty with protective praise, whereas Benitez is spiky, calculating and implacably incapable of accepting any responsibility for the shortcomings of his team. Perhaps the only ways the two men coincide is in their excessive BMI and inability to turn in a watchable performance against Brighton; I’d imagine it will take a long time to win back the trust of any poor neutral who inflicted both televised stalemates on themselves this year. There go 3 hours of your life you’ll not get back.

Mind, when I look back to the opening days of Project Restart, I was as guilty as anyone of squandering my time in front of several dozen dreadful games of football on Sky Sports, BBC and Amazon Prime. I don’t think I’d watched as many live Premier League games in over quarter of a century, which shows I’d missed the game itself, rather than the intrinsic sporting excellence on display, other than when Man City were playing at any rate. Good job I didn’t have access to BT Sport and the pubs were shut most of the time, meaning I had the bonus of watching games without the inane input of some saloon bar savant,  otherwise I’d have been a complete square-eyed addict, though there is evidence I was going down that route as I kept up a watching brief on the Championship as well. As an aside, the Millwall v Boro game kicked off at 3pm on a Wednesday. What was that all about? Is Edward Heath back in Number 10? Do we need to save electricity in case of potential power shortages?

As regards Newcastle United, I approached the on-coming tranche of fixtures with zero expectations and a degree of trepidation. The only good news in lockdown was Matty Longstaff’s short-term contract extension and the offer of an improved new deal, which I really hope will keep him at SJP. As far as the football was concerned, the main positive to be taken was the fact that games provided a break from on-line paranoid, delusional speculation about the doomed takeover of the club, which has been incompetently piloted onto the rocks by Fag Ash Lil Staveley.

The first game back was the pleasant surprise of the deserved thumping we handed out to The Blades, once Egan had been properly red carded. The team probably coalesced on account of the ground being denuded of 25,000 moaning bastards, though the  grudging praise by on line curmudgeons was still hilariously mean-spirited. The Blades had 10 and had to be shite because Joelinton scored… blah blah blah… Thankfully for the empty glass army, the next game against Villa was a dull and functional 1-1 draw, enabling them to whine incessantly, though we’d have won it if Shelvey and Dubravka hadn’t got in a tangle after a late corner from which Villa snatched their equaliser. Next up, City bundled us out of the Cup and the Dismal Jimmies had a right to moan on this occasion; the game almost ruined the bairn’s birthday celebrations, but it could all have been so different if Gayle had put the ball into an empty net at 0-1.

Suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, we turned in the kind of faultless, attacking performance away to Bournemouth that was as good as a Bobby Robson era display. It wasn’t just the goals we scored; it was the manner of the victory. I’ve long said that Saint Maximen needs to be appreciated as, if he turned in a quality season, which he largely did, then he’s away when the first £50m bid lands in Charnley’s inbox. This was ASM’s finest moment. For once, the clamours as to Bournemouth’s inadequacies rather than our proficiencies went largely ignored. Indeed, the media lost the run of themselves, with several talking empty heads saying Broooth should be a shoo-in for Manager of the Year. Errant nonsense. This noise didn’t stop after we drew 2-2 with West Ham, with the deserved point from an even game making us mathematically safe with 5 games to go, which was an early release from the torture of endless hours poring over league tables, creating scenarios both realistic and fantastical. However, that’s not really much of an achievement in the wider scheme of things.

Safety didn’t cause spontaneous eruptions of joy on Tyneside, comparable to Mardi Gras in The Big Easy, which was just as well as our visit to Eastlands saw Broooth’s front foot Mags predictably disembowelled. If only Muto had been involved sooner, things could have been different. However, the Social Media Moaners gave full vent to their despair, claiming we’d be relegated next season and wouldn’t get another point this year. The utter lack of perspective became even more maddening as it appeared to be an accurate prediction, or self-fulfilling prophecy, depending on your attitude.

It seemed that we’d got the monkey off our back in the first period at Watford. We went in a goal to the good and it wouldn’t have flattered us to be two or three ahead. It wasn’t quite as good as Bournemouth, but the situation looked decidedly promising. As I was at the cricket club, I ducked out of the second period to watch our friendly with Benwell Hill. Checking the score at full time, I was shocked to see we’d lost, courtesy of two penalties converted by Troy Deeney. I was disgusted once I saw a recording of the game; the second forty-five saw a total abandonment of the tactics that had served us so well before the interval, as we timorously retreated into our shell. The two penalties were the result of a pair of utterly unnecessary challenges, though the award of the first was more than questionably soft, but what really irked was clear evidence of Broooth returning to type. Decent when required to do some simple motivational speaking, but tactically inept and unable to respond when events go against us.

Then again, it was only a game of football; the same day Jack Charlton, a God as Ireland manager and a Gollum as Newcastle’s, passed away after a life well lived. He quit as Newcastle boss on the eve of my 21^st birthday after a dull 1-1 pre-season game with Sheffield United where less than 6,000 of us dozed on a sunny Gallowgate. Jack was a passionate Socialist; goodness knows how disgusted he would have been with the racist on-line abuse afforded to Irish international David McGoldrick on social media, and to Wilfred Zaha the day after; the latter by a 12-year-old boy. What the hell is this world coming to?

The Spurs game was an honourable defeat. With injuries starting to bite, Broooth was obviously operating blindfolded, with both hands tied behind his back. In the circumstances, NUFC were unlucky not to take a point after 22 efforts on goal; instead, Mourinho claimed his first win at SJP and Newcastle were condemned to finish either 13^th or 14^th.  The point that ensured the same place finish as last year was achieved came from the stinking pile of ordure at the AMEX Arena, that was enough to keep Brighton up as well. The second half was one hell of a tough watch after I’d ducked out of the first to play 6-a-side, which shows how low interest levels had dropped to. Finally, we come to the Liverpool game. Whilst the opening goal was amusing, the subsequent pattern of play, involving minimal possession and desperate defending undone by individual errors, was beyond predictable. Liverpool played us off the park, which is precisely what would have happened under Benitez.

And relax… the season is now over, and the 3-week post-season break is underway.  We’ve said goodbye to the three underwhelming loanees, plus Rob Elliott, Jack Colback and a crop of reserve non-entities but, after 16 weeks, the Saudi-funded, Staveley-led takeover hasn’t been nodded through. My position remains unchanged; Ashley is a bastard, but he’s never defenestrated a homosexual or beheaded an adulteress, so if it is binary choice between him and PIF, I’d have to say he’s still the less repugnant evil.

Oh well; roll on September 12^th…

In The Summertime

Cricket is back. Thank goodness.....

Looking back on recent events, it seems to me that one of the biggest, single challenges during lockdown was finding things to do when stuck indoors all day, every day, in order to fill up the time between waking and going to sleep. I defy anyone, unless they have an iron will, not to become nocturnal and eccentric to a greater or lesser extent, when the only prospect for human interaction is the occasional wave across the road to a friend or acquaintance during the permitted hour’s daily exercise. Even then, it becomes ever harder to find the motivation to move from your couch to walk or cycle when the only purpose for doing so is the act itself. Tynemouth’s a wonderful place to live, but the only directions you can go are north or west. Cycling the same paths for the sake of cycling loses its appeal after a while.

 Undoubtedly, I became lazier, more gluttonous and intemperate after I began working from home the start of April. Once I was furloughed, life became a tawdry version of suspended animation, where television seemed to be my best friend and constant companion. Ordinarily, that isn’t me. I crave discourse and action, or at least I used to. Now, as we emerge hesitant and blinking into a new normal of masks and hand sanitisers being de rigeur in all social situations, in my case I know it to be true that I must gorge myself not on junk food and craft ales, but on human interaction, fresh air, sunlight, a change of scenery and exercise, even if my return to 6-a-side football showed that even a bloke in an induced coma would have quicker reactions than me. Putting on weight and seeing my psoriasis become appreciably worse without exposure to natural Vitamin D can crush the spirit, even before factoring in the unexpected and terrifying aspects of social anxiety about the end of lockdown. However, I think I’ve cracked it; providing the weather remains largely clement, and especially dry, cricket, like it did in 2015, will save me from the worst ravishes of anxiety and depression. In fact, it is already doing so.

 The news that recreational cricket was to be allowed from July 11^th onwards was enough to make my heart dance with joy. While local leagues sorted out what form competitive cricket could take (a kind of geographically specific mini Benson & Hedges for all the various Banks competitions in the NEPL, two cups for the tragically truncated NEMWC and local mini leagues in the NTSCL, though no news appears to be sad news as far as Northumberland is concerned), there were preludial friendly games to bring the game back slowly. At Tynemouth, on a gloriously sunny Saturday, an impressive crowd of over 200 gathered in a responsible, socially distant manner that observed the protocols required by the ECB and those idiots in government, to watch a mixture of first and second teams, captained by Matty Brown and Martin Pollard, play a very watchable competitive 40-over contest that was just shaded by Matty’s team.

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Apart from the participants, the result did not matter; what was important was to see the whole club community gathered together to celebrate the sport we love. In the case of the Tynemouth Bad Boys, it was a case of a great pre-season gathering, spent getting screamingly drunk and talking incessantly about golf for the most part. Perhaps that’s why I fell asleep in the bar and then again in Northumberland Park on the way home. Then again it could just have been the Moretti. And the Punk IPA. And the Estrella. And the shots of Sambucca. Anyway, it was lovely to see everyone again, especially those who dragged their carcase out of the pit to play in Sunday’s Thirds v Academy game, where youthful endeavour proved Emma Micawber wrong; experientia doesn’t always does it. It was another game to enjoy for the sake of it, though the Don’s batting masterclass gave me a few pointers for the season to come.

Unfortunately, there were no Stewart Poynters, or Mike Jones, to be had the following weekend; both on Durham duty. While the seconds travelled to Benwell Hill, the firsts locked horns at Preston Avenue, where the home side prevailed by one wicket, meaning JED Carr was spared the ordeal of trying to win the game for the second time. Of course the man who kickstarted Ben Stokes’s career in a County Under 17 game, had effectively won the game for Tynemouth when proving himself to be a contemporary Malleus Scotorum when dismissing Caledonian Captain Kyle Coetzer with a delivery that Wasim Akram would have been proud of. Shame Jimmy managed to accidentally make himself unavailable for the delayed 2019 Smithson Cup final at Jesmond against Newcastle the day after, as we turned out a side including more Academy lads than first teamers, so it was always going to be tough.

 Having missed the undercard of Alnmouth and Lesbury beating Percy Main off the penultimate ball in the Plate final, it seemed after 10 overs that this would not be so close a contest. Newcastle had reached 135/1 at the halfway point, mainly through the kind of hitting that was once the preserve of Jacques DuToit, by Kieran Trevaskis and an immense 80 from 31 balls, including 10 sixes, by Ollie Hairs. At this point, wicketkeeper captain Matty Brown took off his pads, passed them to Euan “Tynecastle” Stenhouse and brought himself on. He took 4/17 and was ably assisted by David Mansfield’s more than decent 3/20. The final total was 198 all out which was clearly impressive and obviously enough to win this game, but far less severe than it might have been. Indeed, when looking for positives, not one of the Tynemouth lads hid in the field; there were no recriminations and positivity was the key word.  In reply, Tynemouth totalled a decent 151/9, with Matty Brown, Ben Debnam, David Mansfield and Tynecastle himself, all getting solid 25s.

 As could be expected, Jesmond was glorious in the sun and I’d estimate about 300 showed their support, showing that the absence of the world’s greatest game has made the heart grow fonder. Of course, the bar did a roaring trade, as did The Punchbowl afterwards, where the Two By Two Snake Eyes IPA was liquid nectar as ever, not forgetting the fabulous Cuban street food concession where many of us gorged on magnificent meat treats. It was also a great pleasure to catch up with my dear pal David, who has been given a clean bill of health after a traumatic time for him and his family. Thanks for your time mate; until the next one eh?

 So, what lies in store when the real stuff begins this week? Firstly, Tynemouth Bad Boys play Belmont Tigers in the Just Sport Cup on Thursday, before the firsts host Newcastle on Saturday in a 40-over Banks Game and the Thirds welcome Blagdon Park 2s to the development pitch. As I alluded to earlier; I want to get out and about. I’ve got my mask for public transport, so I’m hoping to tick off some of the NEPL grounds I’ve not visited, specifically Crook and Willington this Sunday and Philadelphia the week after. That will leave me with Lanchester and Castle Eden as realistic targets, though not Shotley Bridge, as they have opted against playing competitive senior cricket this year, which is a shame. As the season is scheduled until September 20^th, I can put football on the back burner until then. After that, I’ve got 10 Northern Alliance grounds to visit, which should take me to the end of the year and the prospect of another assault on the SPFL in 2021, forecasts of a second wave notwithstanding. That’s the future; cricket is the present and I’m going to immerse myself in it.

Yesterday's News

Last week, Andy from the Newcastle United fan site Coming Home Newcastle
(https://cominghomenewcastle.sbnation.com/) contacted me with a few questions about my memories of being involved with "The Mag" from the end of the 80s until 2004. Here's what I had to say...

What did you think of The Mag when it first came out? When did you start writing for it? What were you doing at the time, employment-wise? How did you get involved? 

Back in late 1986 I was living in London and on November 22^nd I made my first ever visit to Stamford Bridge, where we completely dismantled a woeful Chelsea side 3-1 (Andy Thomas grabbed a couple). After the game, the three of us headed back towards Portobello Road for a few beers. Before the session began, I nipped into Rough Trade Records, no doubt looking for the latest release by Age of Chance, Big Flame or Camper Van Beethoven and in there, I came across a copy of a magazine I’d never seen before; When Saturday Comes. Having long pored over self-published inkies about music, I was amazed to find one on football, so I took a punt on it. On the Monday, I posted a cheque for a subscription; the latest issue is #400 and I’ve got every one of them. For me, it will always be the original fanzine.

The next year, I moved up to Leeds for postgraduate studies. It was a crazy city; the north side from Headingley to Harehills was one large bohemian, ganja-suffused commune, while the south part was an ugly, angry, teeming, open sewer of National Front sponsored hatred. That’s where Elland Road is, but I only went there once; the unfettered abuse from the sieg heiling psychos in the Lowfields Road turned me right off. If I wasn’t coming home on the bus on a Friday (£4 return with a student card) to watch Newcastle, I’d take the train to Bradford and head up to Valley Parade to watch City in a far more conducive environment, where often we’d partake in a post-match curry while poring over City Gent, featuring the juvenilia of the schoolboy Mark Douglas, which then as now, the Voice of Bantam Progressivism. During my West Yorkshire sojourn, I was starting to see more and more club fanzines, often in Crash or Jumbo Records, while also picking up the latest offerings by Dinosaur Jr, Einsturzende Neubauten or the Butthole Surfers. How I longed for a fanzine dedicated to Newcastle to appear in the classified section of When Saturday Comes, to which I’d contributed a couple of letters and an article.

During that year, I’d began to write about music, predominantly gig and record reviews, for the local independent Leeds Other Paper and the campus-based Leeds Student, where the editor was the now world-renowned food critic, Jay Rayner, who encouraged me to use my imagination and articulate opinions trenchantly. While at University I’d had the benefit of 24-hour free IT and a primitive kind of internal email system. It meant I could explore how to express myself on screen rather than on paper, not only saving labour but also teaching myself to be a ruthless sub-editor of my own work. Luckily, after the Leeds adventure was over, I found gainful employment with South Tyneside Council in their Adult Education Department, where similar IT facilities were available at work. This pleased me enormously, as I was anxious to carry on writing and on return to Newcastle just in time for the hideous relegation season of 1988/1989, I started penning articles about music for Paint It Red, where I met Kriss Knights (aka Billy Furious) and The Crack. I also picked up a copy of The Mag’s first issue on the day of the Spurs game that opened our season and marked the return of Gascoigne and Waddle; 2-2 after we’d been 2-0 up at the break. The season never recovered from that point.

I was incredibly impressed by the professional lay out and design of The Mag, which blew away most other clubs’ badly photocopied and consequently almost impossible to read A5 efforts. As the season wore on, I still didn’t think about writing anything myself, never having written about football before, but became more and more impressed with the range of opinions it contained; some I agreed with, though others I diverged markedly from. It wasn’t until after the season ending draw with Millwall, where I sat sunbathing on the Gallowgate, that I wrote, in my head, something about football, specifically a piece begging that we held on to John Hendrie. Kriss had told me that all I needed to do to appear in The Mag was submit a piece to Mark and I’d be accepted, as long as it wasn’t rubbish. Amazingly, my work was published in the first issue of 1989/1990, when we battered Leeds United 5-2. That was me hooked; subsequently, I wrote for The Mag for 16 seasons until 2004/2005, when I transferred to Steve Wraith’s players inc that would also subsequently go by the name of #9.

Did you ever think it would become what it did, in terms of longevity and popularity? Why do you think it became so popular?  

I was 24 going on 25 when I first contributed to The Mag; the idea that anything creative I was involved in would last was something I found hard to countenance. When you’re young, everything happens so fast and your life changes course so abruptly that you don’t have time to analyse past events or predict the future. However what cemented the role of supporters as scribes in the fanzine movement were the seismic changes in the game, that came via a series of aftershocks following the Hillsborough Disaster, from the abolition of the proposed ID Card scheme to the formation of the Premier League and everything associated with the commercialization of the sport, by way of those semi-mythical E Generation terrace love-ins post Italia 90; all of these developments meant that the fans were now being taken seriously. We proved we could be articulate, progressive and responsible; fanzines reflected this, much in the way podcasts do now I suppose. Hence, there was a certain inevitability to The Mag’s sustained success mainly, it has to be said, because Newcastle were so terrible until Keegan came, that there was plenty to moan about and then loads more to celebrate, especially as the zeitgeist meant there was also room for half a dozen other zines dedicated to NUFC to come and go over the next decade.

Did you know the other writers and contributors? How was it all put together? Were there work meetings or social events? Or were they just a name you read alongside yours each month? 

I only knew Kriss Knights initially, but due to my involvement with The Mag, I met some wonderful folks who I continue to call pals and with whom I can hold a conversation about any subject under the sun (even though it is inevitably football or music). I’m talking about Chris Tait, Tony Fiddes, Lynne Knights and several others I’ve completely lost touch with, such as Ian Maxted or Dean Christopher. Also, it helped launch the career of a couple of journalists; the best writer about football in our region, George Culkin, and also Martin Hardy. I should also mention there were some really good lads on other fanzines; Derek Graham from Talk of the Toon and Dave Jameson, who is on the mend after a terrible bout of cancer, who co-edited Half Mag Half Biscuit. Mind there were also several others I’d cheerily cross the road to avoid, then and now, including one rogue who was actually a Liverpool fan and collected Nazi memorabilia as a hobby…

 

Basically, Mark Jensen had a very laissez faire attitude to content; he just sat in his office waiting for people to bring stuff in for him. Over the years it changed from hard copies, handwritten as well as typed, to floppy discs, and then emails. He then put it all together and sent it off to the designers, who made it look striking and glamorous, by adding colour photos and using glossy paper. At first, we only featured away match reports, that were the preserve of the very wonderful Steve Brennan, but once he settled down to domestic life, Mark organized who would do what report, which now included home games as well, because a sizeable part of our readership were exiled Geordies who, before the internet, struggled to find detailed discussion of games they knew the score of, but probably hadn’t seen. You were never told what to write and that’s probably why in its later years, contributors became columnists; Kriss as Billy Furious and Chris as Sweet Left Foot, for example, who covered several topics each issue.

As far as social gatherings went, there were impromptu beers before and after games and gigs, in several cases. The only official do used to be the end of season one on the Sunday before Whit Bank Holiday, when we’d all get bladdered in Rosies and sing our way through the NUFC songbook, as well as most of The Clash’s first album.

Do you have a favourite article you wrote? Was there one you’d have liked to write, if you had access to greater resources or to an individual? 

Wow; tough one. I was pleased with stuff I wrote about Douglas Hall and Freddy Shepherd after the Toongate fiasco. Peter Beardsley once phoned me up to thank me for a piece looking at his contribution in both spells at the club. Regrets? I always felt I should have interviewed Malcolm Allen, as he intrigued me as a person as much as a footballer, but mainly I really wish I’d gone after the club over the Bond scheme that took half a grand out of the pockets of hard-pressed fans, then eventually gave it to various scions of the Hall Dynasty by a circuitous route. Also, in around 94 Public Enemy were due to tour England, though it was subsequently scrapped. Kriss wanted the cover to be Andy Cole side by side with Chuck D, though I thought Flavor Flav and John Burridge were a better couple. No tour; no photoshoot alas…

The written version of The Mag transitioned, eventually entirely, online. I don’t know this but presumably it was due to the changing media market and falling sales? Do you think there’s still room for a fanzine in the modern world or have we moved too far into social media and blogs to go back? 

Economics is only partly the answer; rather like Spinal Tap, fanzines have become a more exclusive taste. The days of a general, not too controversial read about your club are long gone. Why pay for someone else’s opinion when you can get it for free and submit your own, however badly written, illogical or even prejudiced your thoughts are? Goodness knows how we’ll come out of this pandemic, other than financially ruined in many cases, but we went into it a more reactionary, selfish and bigoted society than we were in the 90s. As ever, it appears that only Celtic and Liverpool have fans whose commitment to their club is matched by an unstinting social conscience and sense of responsibility. Despite the wonderful work of Bill Corcoran and the NUFC Food Bank, witness how such good actions are dwarfed by the amount of Newcastle fans untroubled by the proposed Saudi takeover. If this had been 20 years ago, we’d have seen regular 2,000-word articles in The Mag arguing the pros and cons of this potential deal; now it’s far easier to send a Tweet calling anyone who opposes the takeover a Mackem, without soiling your frontal lobes with thoughts about morality and football club ownership. An unthinking culture made possible by the younger generation’s disinclination to read anything doesn’t afford house room to nuanced debate.

Sadly, the law of diminishing returns is also impossible to ignore. If newspaper sales are down 80% on a decade ago, what hope is there for independently produced publications? I wasn’t involved with The Mag during its last decade, but my feeling was that to be a success, or even a going concern, fanzines needed to take a leaf out of the independent music scene’s innovative sales practices, whereby 7” singles, in some ways the quill pen and parchment of the digital age, are desirable items for particular niche markets, as well as always coming with a download code. From 2014 to 2018, I edited The Popular Side; an A5 inkie NUFC zine, with no adverts, no colour, no website or anything “modern” other than a Twitter account, costing £1. We did everything cost price and turned out 14 issues that were all well received, but it was simply too much hard graft. The project was also co-piloted by Bill Corcoran who, as I’ve mentioned, has done such great work with the NUFC Food Bank and Steve Hastie, who worked tireless on behalf of our support as part of the Fans Liaison Committee. Both of them were slogging their guts out on other projects and I couldn’t find anyone to help me sell the thing, so we had to call it a day. That’s a great shame as I still think there’s a market for a dedicated Newcastle fanzine, among a certain age and social demographic.

When you look (if indeed you do) at fan websites or Twitter, are you grateful that you wrote in an era without instant comment and generally negative ‘trolling’? Did you ever hear feedback about your work? 

I think this is best summed up by the fact that despite every smartphone owner being in possession of the entire history of human culture, most of the time people are looking at amateur porn, photos of cats looking cute or blurred footage of Alan Barnes wandering down Old Durham Road. Instant comment should provoke debate, but it can be so disorganized and, as you say, deliberately provocative and hurtful, that getting away from the Tower of Babel is good for the soul and the sanity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with provocative or controversial opinions, which are my stock in trade, but I’m only interested if they are couched within the parameters of reasoned, detailed, respectful debate. I publish a blog, often about football, sometimes politics, music or cricket, every single week at http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.com/ and I would love to engage in debate about my opinions. Looking back over 30 years of writing, the best feedback I’ve had, both positive and negative, is that it made people think. I hope it will continue to make them laugh, cry, nod in approval and fizz with impotent rage, all at the same time.

Why did you stop writing? Did you run out of things to comment on about the club? Or did life just move on and you became busy with other areas? Did that writing experience lead to something else? 

As I said above, I haven’t stopped. I’ve written for over 100 fanzines, edited programmes for non-league clubs and contributed poems and short stories to many different litzines over the past 30 years. I edit one, called Glove (@GloveLitZine) and ten years ago I wrote a book about Percy Main Amateurs of the Northern Alliance. If you want to read either or both, email your address to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk and I’ll sort you out.

Life has moved on, but I’ve never been short of an opinion. Also, I’m delighted to say my son maintains his own blog about music, football and politics, as well as an encyclopaedic Instagram account dedicated to craft beer (@peevytimes).

Nowadays, if you write online you have a profile and people know who you are. The fanzine days had an anonymity about them. Is this something you enjoyed? Or did you sometimes wish people knew you were that guy whose work they read every month? 

One thing I’ve not touched on is the fact my real football love is the non-league game: specifically, Newcastle Benfield. The local scene probably consists of about 1,000 diehard followers from Whitley Bay to Whickham and back again. Over that time, I’ve probably grown to recognize about 80% of the active supporters well enough to hold a conversation with. That’s what I adore, the human touch, social interaction and friendly rivalry. In that world, I don’t want to be known for what I have written, but for the person I am. As regards The Mag, anonymity was useful as there’s an element of our support that holds those with book-learning in suspicion.

Overall, how do you look back on that period? 

With enormous and enduring fondness. You felt part of a movement that was starting debates, rather than fights in car parks, which was a massive step forward from football in the 80s. Football fans showed we are civilised and rehabilitated the game in the 90s. Sure it eventually became too commercial and high profile, but at least we were listened to. Clickbait polls by gambling websites do not serve a similar function, because football fans are now, or have been rendered, passive, unthinking, conformist consumers. That’s so sad.

The Trial

Gizza job... anywhere but SITEL

It may be only a minor ripple in the tsunami of bad news the COVID-19 pandemic has brought and continues to bring us, but I’m back to being gainfully unemployed after SITEL, the hideous capitalist behemoth that subcontracted me to work for Sotheby’s these past 20 months, decided to dispense with my services, thus ending my cushy little furlough and sent me scuttling back off to the Labour Exchange to claim National Assistance. Unlike last time, I’m getting Jobseekers Allowance rather than Universal Credit. It isn’t a fortune, but I’ll not need to start busking in the Metro just yet.

There’ll be much more of an expose into SITEL’s squalid employment practises later on, but suffice to say, while I’m more than proud to be a fully paid up member of the Awkward Squad, my overall boss there is yet another example of the endless conveyor belt of petty, intransigent, lying bullshitters I’ve had the misfortune of being line managed by over the past four decades. Throughout that time, I’ve never sought a single promotion that would have given me any kind of instrumental power over colleagues who would have magically been transformed into subordinates. In fact, I’ve endlessly questioned the motives of anyone who has attempted to crawl up the ladder of executive career development, unless they simply wanted a few more quid. I find it funny how people change when they get a shot at leadership; I’ve seen numerous decent colleagues absolutely ruined by the chance, or sometimes requirement, to lord it over their inferiors. Yes, we could it say it shows more about them than us mere mortals, but the problem is bosses, like coppers, are only there to make workers’ lives a misery, often by insisting it’s their way or the highway. Considering all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life is read books, listen to music, watch football, drink beer and express my thoughts on paper, you’d think the rest of the world could have continued to accommodate my needs and aspirations by continuing to furlough me until I’m 60 in another 4 years…

Getting made redundant from Tyne Met College on April 1^st, 2018 kept me alive and allowed me to rediscover my love of people and sarcasm, by working behind the bar at Tynemouth Cricket Club, as serving under the benevolent aegis of wisecracking super cynic Steve “Fanta” Mordue was an absolute pleasure. Sadly, it wasn’t enough money and that’s why I had to get a start at Sotheby’s. As I’ve said many times, my colleagues at Sotheby’s, in my team at least, were great, but the bosses, as ever, were the lowest rank of humanity, in particular the overall head honcho, syntactic butcher Judith Motteshead, Hitler-haired harridan Loren Nelson and malevolent bruiser Adele Clark. SITEL as an organisation treats its employees like dirt on the bottom of their shoes and the Quorum based bosses follow that dictum to the last degree. They don’t need barely literate keyboard warriors on work time, grassing up fellow workers because of their political beliefs. Laboratory rats have more rights and are valued more than SITEL drones.

Remember that blog on my experiences working on NHS 111? The reason I’m again resting is that they sacked me, for Gross Professional Conduct no less, because I published that, having been alerted to its existence by an interfering tout from outside the organisation. Of course, I didn’t take their decision sitting down and appealed against the judgement. All my working life I’ve been a union; NASUWT when I was in schools, NATFHE and subsequently UCU when then merged with AUT during my time in Further Education and, as soon as I joined the non-unionised beast of SITEL, I filled out a CWU membership form. Seriously, these lads do not fuck about; they’re like the RMT in shorts. The support I had before, during and after my initial hearing and then the appeal was simply first class. It had the SITEL top brass squirming in their seats, which I think can be demonstrated by the 27 days it took SITEL to dismiss my appeal.

The main substance of my appeal was not the existence of my blog; I fully accepted my authorship of this piece, but as I shall demonstrate, the responsibility for the actual existence of this piece rests exclusively with Adele Clark, whose conduct towards me throughout this process was unsympathetic to the point of personal vindictiveness that I maintain would be categorised as discrimination under the terms of the Equality Act.  If she hadn’t been hellbent on grinding me underfoot, I’d never have written the blog in the first place.

While I enjoyed a productive and positive working relationship with Adele from my appointment in October 2018, other people on the Sotheby’s team warned me of Adele’s domineering and bullying attitude to those she had a grudge against. From the start of 2020, I would say I have been forced to endure the full extent of Adele’s ire. It really isn’t a pleasant experience. Unfortunately, as SITEL is non-unionised and that most of the employees are fairly transient in nature, workers are compelled to endure completely unacceptable working conditions and oppressive line management in a culture where profit is the be all and end all, while staff are expendable underlings.

Moving to the explicit grounds for my appeal, nothing demonstrates Adele’s personally vindictive attitude to me more precisely than her decision to redeploy me from working from home in the Sotheby’s campaign, to return to SITEL to work on the NHS 111 campaign. As everyone knows, I have suffered with anxiety and depression for almost my entire adult life and take daily medication to combat the worst effects of the two illnesses. The severity of both conditions varies according to circumstances, with my levels of anxiety increasing exponentially in 2020 since the COVID-19 pandemic. Without a doubt, the prevalence of my mental health problems ensures I am covered by the Equality Act and this ought to have been considered, in terms of a rigorous risk assessment, undertaken in conjunction with an occupational health professional, before any redeployment.  I pointed this out to Adele on Friday 3^rd April when she called to break the news of the change in my working circumstances, but she completely and utterly ignored my worries that I explicitly referred to during this call, because she simply doesn’t care about the mental health of any of her staff.

Having been left with the choice between going sick, with only statutory sick pay of £95 a week to sustain me, or returning to SITEL, I was financially compelled to attend SITEL. Because of my anxiety, I was utterly unable to work effectively and efficiently from SITEL, though I would have had absolutely no problems with continuing my work for Sotheby’s from home. Adele knew and ignored this fact, which is a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The first day I spent with NHS 111 was characterised by an extremely unpleasant incident when three members of the NHS 111 staff, whose names I don’t know, engaged in an episode of physically threatening and verbally abusive conduct towards me. As far as I know, this was not recorded, nor was the replication of the confrontation on Wednesday 8th April. Thankfully, I was furloughed from this date and so it did not seem to matter at the time. It will take on a more significant aspect when we inevitably end up at an Employment Tribunal.

At this point, I ought to mention that my partner Laura received a letter from her doctor on Friday 27^th March instructing her to shield for 12 weeks. On that date, I was working from home, so it was not an issue and we could continue to live together. However, once it became clear I had been ordered to return to work by Adele, Laura and I decided it was not safe to do so, bearing in mind that she had seen the chaotic conditions at SITEL on Thursday 25^th March at close quarters, when she had arranged to collect my IT equipment in order to enable me to work from home. Hence, on Monday 6^th April, I began living in another property we own, to allow Laura to shield and be isolated.

Without divulging her litany of health conditions, her immune system is compromised and for me to return home each night would have been foolhardy. Obviously, I was not happy about this and my anxiety as to how Laura would cope alone made my anxiety again grow exponentially.  Therefore, on the evening of Monday 6^th April, I wrote my blog, as I had absolutely no other outlet for my frustrations and fears. I did not want to burden Laura with my anxieties, and I was unable to discuss this with Adele, who had compounded her contempt towards me by taking leave on the very day I returned to SITEL, demonstrating her natural compassion and empathy. If Adele had accepted the veracity of my misgivings and done anything about this, I would not have written the blog. Consequently, all of this is her fault.

As stated earlier, I was furloughed on Wednesday 8^th April. I recognise that this is the point I ought to have taken the blog down, but because of the immense relief afforded by the decision to take me out of the firing line, I was not thinking coherently. Suffice to say that, by the time I was able to reason logically, after I was able to return to live with Laura on Wednesday 15^th April, following a week of self-isolation made necessary by the time I’d spent at SITEL, it had slipped my mind. Indeed, I did not think about it again until Adele had my immediate line manager, the weak and feckless glorified tea boy Richard Cook, call me on Friday 1st May; needless to say, I took the blog down immediately after that phone call.

Having outlined Adele’s ultimate responsibility for the rapid decline in my mental health and the genesis of my blog, I shall now move on to the various abuses of process committed by Adele, in relation to the disciplinary investigation she has undertaken. It is my contention that, as she was materially involved in the case, whether she accepts her responsibility for this state of affairs or not, Adele should not have been appointed as the investigating manager or chair of the disciplinary meeting, because of her involvement in the case from the outset. A disinterested person, in the legal sense of the term, should have overseen the whole process. Not only should Adele not have been the presiding manager, she should not have made several errors in the process that show her to be either incompetent in such a role, or to be personally vindictive to the extent she has displayed clear discrimination against me, a vulnerable adult, under the terms of the Equality Act.

The first incident of an abuse of process is the email that Adele alleged alerted her to the existence of my blog. She was evasive when questioned about this email, to the extent of furtive obfuscation. Her scarcely credible claims included the fact the email was sent anonymously and from a generic email host. When she was then asked to either provide the email, or to confirm the address, including provider, it was sent from, she refused. Despite repeated requests for this, she has point blank refused to share the details. I question her motives for this, to the extent that I suspected she was lying about the existence of such an email. Now I have been provided with confirmation of its existence and the dread hand of Northumbria Police in its composition, then she has a reason to keep it secret, presumably as it incriminates the author… And we all know who that is eh?

After the disciplinary meeting adjourned on Wednesday 6^th May, Adele then subsequently emailed me Thursday 14^th May requesting we reconvene the meeting to discuss some further “evidence” she had discovered. As well as being highly irregular conduct, she is not permitted to introduce further material after the hearing. I would also state that the material she sought to table was not written by me and had nothing to do with the case.

Finally, the actual decision letter I received on Tuesday 19^th May contained no less than three abuses of process. Firstly, the letter was not accompanied by the agreed version of notes from the disciplinary meeting, which the SITEL disciplinary policy states ought to have been attached. At the time of writing, I still do not have a copy of these minutes. Secondly, as she was advised during the disciplinary hearing but chose to ignore, her reference to section 1.5 of the SITEL Global Code of Conduct having been breached by me is both erroneous and irrelevant, as the spirit of this document relates to work done on behalf of SITEL, not independent of them as my blog was. Adele’s decision seems to risibly suggest I ought to have submitted my blog, and presumably, by implication, anything written by me for publication after Monday 15^th October 2018, for SITEL approval. This is a specious and illogical conclusion.

Finally, and perhaps most damningly, in her response Adele does not make any reference to the explanatory mitigation outlined by my CWU representative, Mark Hugall. It appears, as I alluded to earlier, Adele entered this meeting with her mind made up, which fits with her wholly irregular role as judge, jury and executioner in this whole sorry episode.

In conclusion, I respectfully asked SITEL to set the decision to dismiss me aside and to allow me to begin again with SITEL, preferably working from home as part of the Sotheby’s campaign, or furloughed if there is not the volume of work to justify this. Being made redundant is understandable in the current state of affairs but being sacked because of the vindictive malice of a bigoted, discriminatory manager is not permissible under any circumstances.

The appeal hearing was conducted by another SITEL manager, Simon Saunders, who I taught in my first school in the late 80s and early 90s. He also played right back for the junior football team I managed. Back in the day he was a hesitant, phlegmatic and somewhat limited boy. His attempt to preside over this meeting proved little had changed over years, other than his hairstyle, as he proved himself to be an inattentive, bald dullard. The appeal took place on Wednesday 3^rd June, but it took almost 3 weeks for the agreed minutes to be circulated, via an email that also asked if I were prepared to answer more questions either electronically or over the phone. Presumably because Simon hadn’t been listening the first time around.

They arrived 48 hours later on Thursday 25^th June; syntactically mangled, ideologically biased and indicating the case against me remained gossamer thin. After a few minutes wrangling with Simon’s tortured verbiage that seemed to have improved little in the 30 years since he was in my class, I felt that the questions he really wanted me to ask were as follows -:

1.      Why were the circumstances that enabled you to attend work at SITEL between Monday 16^th and Wednesday 25^th March different to those that you objected to before attending work on the NHS line of business?

2.      Why were the circumstances that enabled you to attend two formal meetings at SITEL different to those that you objected to before attending work on the NHS line of business?

3.      Why did you feel able to enter the employee canteen and purchase a sandwich and a coffee with other SITEL employees present when you were no longer a SITEL Employee?

4.      Why do you feel comfortable to attend demonstrations in a public area?

5.      Do you still consider that SITEL’s response to the quoted paragraph is a disproportionate reaction to a description of other employees of SITEL using these offensive words on a public forum?

Obviously, I passed the initial garbled document on to Tom at CWU and the advice he gave me was that I did not need to answer any questions that could have been asked at the appeal hearing. Consequently, I offered no response to questions 1, 2 and 3, though I would actually have said the following -:

1.      Contractually, I was obliged to attend work on those dates. If I had not attended, I would have been regarded as Absent Without Leave and consequently dismissed. Financially, if I had taken sick leave, I could not have afforded to live on Statutory Sick Pay. It is only by good fortune that I did not contract COVID-19 in the environment I was required to work.

2.      I had been assured that SITEL had belatedly taken steps to observe social distancing protocols and so was prepared to attend these meetings in person. I am happy to confirm that the building, as far as I could see, was a far safer environment than I the one I had last been aware of.

3.      As I was early for the meeting and feeling hungry, I decided to have lunch. I have never queried the social distancing in the catering facilities at SITEL, just the lack of adequate measures in work areas and the entrance in the period up to and including Wednesday 23^rd March 2020. I was not aware that I was no longer permitted to purchase refreshments, or to drink coffee or eat sandwiches before my appeal hearing. I would suggest that if SITEL wished me to be both hungry and thirsty before the appeal hearing, the latest example of discrimination against me goes far beyond the Equality Act and towards a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the very first level of Maslow’s Pyramid of Human Needs.

Deciding not to humiliate them further, I didn’t include these 3 answers, choosing instead to focus on questions 4 and 5. As regards question 4, while it could be interpreted as an attempt to introduce additional material, I am happy to respond as I presume it included a ham-fisted reference to the three Black Lives Matters peaceful protests in Newcastle on successive Saturdays in June 2020. Sadly, on account of Laura’s requirement to shield, I can state unequivocally that I did not attend any of these demonstrations, though I wish I had been at all of them. I did question what business it is of SITEL what I did with my time after receiving my dismissal notice on Tuesday 19th May 2020 and  further suggested my social media accounts, that SITEL appeared to be assiduous in their readership of, should not be regarded as an accurate account of my movements.

I was happy to offer this response to question 5. Yes. I also reiterated that there is absolutely no reference to SITEL in the article, so precisely how such a conclusion could be arrived at by a reasonable person, in the legal sense of the term, is beyond comprehension. I also pointed out that the use of the word “offensive” implies a value judgement had been made at the outset of this process, meaning Simon Saunders demonstrated himself as being prejudicial to my appeal. Therefore, I urged that this entire point were to be discounted when considering my appeal and sent the email just after the dismal Burnley v Watford game.

I was forced to wait until Friday 3^rd July for a decision on my appeal. I knew Simon Saunders was of limited intelligence, but even I didn’t believe he was that much of a slow learner. Fairly obviously SITEL up here shit their pants and passed the case onto HR at British HQ, who’ve written, or adapted after some furious copy and pasting, a tortuously long and largely irrelevant response, explaining why they’ve decided to go ahead and sack me. No problem fucktards; we’ll see you in court!

Magical Johnson

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