Anomie in the UK

Dromio: There’s no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature…

Antipholus:  Why, but there’s many a man hath more with than hair.

Dromio: Not a man of those but he hath the wit to lose his hair.

(The Comedy of Errors II ii 75-77)

On Tuesday 25^th March, I had fully intended to attend the 125^th Anniversary game between a Northern League Select and an FA XI at Bishop Auckland’s Heritage Park, which is one of the very few Northern League grounds I’ve not been to; the others are Newton Aycliffe and Penrith’s new home incidentally. Everything was in place, with lifts there and back organised until the toad work squatted on my life and made an early departure an impossibility. Instead, I did my son a favour; having been given a free ticket for Newcastle United versus Everton by our friend Gary, who was stuck at work, Ben ducked out on the basis he needs to complete his A Level History coursework on the Sheffield Outrages, which have little or nothing to do with Neil Warnock’s tenure at Bramall Lane surprisingly enough.  It was time for me to adopt the fatherly role and take in the visit of The Toffees that allowed us to celebrate 10 Years of Tayls. In the absence of “Pards,” who was completing his 3 game stadium ban, the support needs the analytical words of someone they can trust. Cometh the hour; cometh the man.

Suffice to say, I’m feeling desperately remorseful for having attended SJP, but not for reasons to do with the eventual result. As ever, my mantra is that it matters not one whit who is in charge of Newcastle United, who plays for them or indeed where the team finishes in the league whilst Ashley is in charge. We need Ashley OUT now and 100% Fan Ownership IN, although I am prepared to accept 51% Fan Ownership as a transitional demand. Consequently a 3-0 home reverse, though it may be a grievous wound in our thrilling campaign to secure 8^th spot in the Premier League and disappointing though the final score was, is ultimately of very little meaning in the wider scheme of things.  The real reason for my guilt was the fact that only 305 people made it to Bishop Auckland last night and the league chairman alludes to how let down he feels by that figure in his daily blog. I can’t speak for anyone else at my club Heaton Stannington, but as a non-driver, getting to South West Durham by public transport when I could only leave Tynemouth at 5.30 was an utter impossibility.

So, what was the game like? To be honest, not that bad; certainly there was no truth in any witticisms that stated Pardew was the lucky one to miss it because he was serving the last game of his stadium ban. Read the www.nufc.com match report, as they call it right; a logical, reasoned evaluation of an evening where we deserved to lose to a better side, but not by such a margin. Biffa’s wise words are utterly without malice, hysteria or the need scapegoat players with needless, ill-founded ad hominem abuse.  It will be of utterly no consolation to Manchester United fans to learn that Everton are a vastly improved side since Martinez replaced Moyes. In attack, they were lethal; there has been no fiercer a critic of Tim Krul than me, but the keeper had absolutely no chance with 3 superb finishes into the roof of the net. Up front Everton were superb to watch; Lukaku, Barkley, Deulofeu and substitute Osman were incisive and effective in a way that Newcastle United will never aspire to be when Remy, our one world class player, is missing. This does not mean our defence played badly; Krul, as has been pointed out, had no chance with any of the goals and made three other impressive saves, while Williamson was steady as ever and Coloccini made only one error, which gifted them their final goal. At full back, Dummett may not be as good as Haidara, whose absence is causing an outbreak of Marveaux Syndrome related to his supposed ability, but he is a far better option than Santon and utterly undeserving the bile-spitting penmanship and tweeting of a section of our support who seem desperate for him to fail. Calling him “Ramage with a better hairstyle” is simply stupid. However, we can concede that Yanga-Mbiwa, fine player he is, had an utter nightmare and the return of Debuchy can’t come quick enough. In midfield Tiote was excellent, while Sissoko, Gouffran and Anita all put in worthy showings, even if the latter two players missed excellent opportunities in the 2^nd and 77^th minutes respectively. Anita’s miss, which was terrible, was the cue for the SJP fire drill which gained greater momentum when Osman made it 3-0.  Up front Cisse tried his best all night; making runs, showing himself, never hiding, though De Jong remained a disappointment; I remain to be convinced he can offer enough of a goal threat at this level. The most ridiculous part of the entire evening was seeing Shola lumbering onto the pitch in the 89^th minute; was he supposed to score a hat trick? One wonders exactly what level of irony was being employed with that tactical switch and just exactly how did he feel when Carver told him to get stripped? Still, it could have been worse; it could have been Tayls fistpumping his way onto the pitch, which would have been enough to get me to leave early. Instead, I stayed to the end and applauded them off; Yanga-Mbiwa and De Jong apart, the team had given a decent account of themselves and had been defeated by a good side. Sometimes you have to admit your limitations and not start cry-arsing about how unfair the truth is; either on “the metty” home with your pals or on-line, whether the subject of your complaint is NUFC’s latest accounts, the most recent Fans Forum minutes of the club website or coruscating judgements about NUST.

Unfounded criticism may sting, but the truth can wound. The 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict is often known as The Six Day War. John Reed’s memorable account of the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was entitled Ten Days That Shook the World. Andy Warhol once commented that “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” Somebody ought to mention these facts to the Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust, as at the time of writing, it is 65 days since their AGM when chair Norman Watson announced that it was NUST’s intention to be more outward looking in the year to come and that NUST’s board were seeking to properly engage with ordinary members.  It is also 37 days since the results of elections to the board of NUST were announced and, during that time, the only contact from NUST to ordinary members has been a link to a dire on-line fanzine from the dynastic Shachtmanites at the Football Supporters’ Federation and a handwringing set of platitudes over the club’s proposed sale of the land behind the Gallowgate without, it must be said, any suggestion of a meeting of members to debate an organised strategy to this or any other developments.

Another intriguing post on the NUST website is an account of the findings of the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group’s discussions on fan involvement and the on-going campaign by Supporters Direct for more involvement at club level. I find this somewhat ironic, considering NUST is still refusing to engage with its own members. Personally, I sent an email to Norman Watson asking when the next open meeting of NUST members would be taking place almost two weeks ago; as yet I’ve had no reply. Perhaps I ought to take up my concerns with Supporters Direct. Contrast NUST’s disinclination to acknowledge correspondence from an ordinary member with the fact that Chi Onwurah MP managed to get a response to her offer of an olive branch to Ashley, even if it was a curt, brusque dismissal of her concerns by the owner’s factotum, Lee Charnley who, in the manner of the late Sir David Frost, appears to have risen without trace in the Newcastle United administrative hierarchy. Although, bearing in mind that SJP is a sporting Marie Celeste on non-matchdays (a situation that appears to be the eventual aim of the ownership when home games take place in the future), anyone who is still in a job on Strawberry Place and can compose a simple declarative sentence of confrontational intent could clamber up the greasy pole in the way Charnley has.  

However, we are not living in Elizabethan times; ambition, as demonstrated by Macbeth for instance, is not to be frowned upon. Although, putting oneself in the public eye, whether it is through promotion or nomination, and I speak as someone intending to contest the Dene ward of Newcastle City Council in the May local elections for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, means that judgements will be made by those who encompass the entire spectrum of humanity from the ignorant and indolent to the informed and involved. To expect otherwise and to respond with the whiff of burning martyr, as acrid as a smouldering tyre-strewn bonfire on the Eleventh Night, is naïve in my judgement.  Criticism is par for the course; the sad fact is that much criticism is unfair and unfounded. A dozen or so people were unhappy with the blog I posted last time out that appears in the current issue of Stand  magazine; some of them even read what I had to say and a couple of them may have understood it. Much of the criticism was inaccurate and unfounded, but I didn’t allow it to bother me. You simply can’t please all of the people all of the time; the trick is to learn exactly who’s criticising you in a constructive way and consider their points, perhaps even take their thoughts on board, while factoring out the irrelevant, the mendacious and the moronic.

I know one of the newly elected NUST board members relatively well and like him tremendously, having worked at close quarters with him in NUFC Fans United and admired his tireless devotion to both the Mike Ashley Out Campaign and Time 4 Change. Knowing what I know about him, I have dismissed out of hand in the most strident manner possible the snide criticisms that others have mentioned to me, claiming that the prior activities with which he has been involved have all been done with the intent of getting himself a cushy number among the supporting elite. To suggest that is the case is a preposterous and unfair lie.  Let me state without question that I agree with Steve Wraith’s comment in his editorial of issue 3 of #9 fanzine; Graeme Cansdale deserves the freedom of Newcastle upon Tyne for the hours of unstinting, devoted work he has willingly put in to try and save the soul of Newcastle United.

However, and this is where things get difficult, I understand the disappointment that is being expressed in many quarters with NUST’s continued inactivity, especially post-election. I would equate it to the feelings of being let down so many people experienced after Blair’s government came to power in 1997 and absolutely nothing changed.  The elections were a chance for NUST to reinvent themselves and talk to we ordinary members. This hasn’t happened. Yet.  

I know I didn’t stand for NUST board election and I realise that if I had, I may not have been successful, bearing in mind the calibre of the other candidates. However, and this is a big however, if I had come out of that first board meeting post-election on March 11^th , the same night as the Under 21s hosted Chelsea in the FA Youth Cup and The Stan fell to a 3-1 home loss to Chester le Street Town, knowing full well that the promised interaction with members would not have been happening any time soon, and 15 days later I think it is fair to say none of us are holding our collective breath in the expectation of a full public or members only meeting this side of the Twelfth of Never, I would have gone public with that fact and fuck the consequences even if it meant that I was in breach of some kind of protocol. After all, NUST were in a hell of a hurry to publish the minutes of the first Fans Forum on their website. I’ve not seen such alacrity when it comes to publish accounts of their own meetings.

I call upon the NUST board to fulfil the promise of the AGM of Wednesday 22^nd January and address the ordinary membership via a full meeting to discuss the strategy of the organisation moving forward. This is needed not only to keep their word, but also to maintain the good name of at least one of the newly elected board members. Perhaps it will also quell the groundswell of dissatisfaction and disengagement Newcastle United’s support is in danger of succumbing to. Far better we side with the carnivalesque philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin than subside to the SJP equivalent of Emile Durkheim’s description of torpid anomie.

Rosalind: O, how full of briars is this… world!

Duke: Sweet are the uses of adversity.

(As You Like It II i 11-12)

The Cult of the Personality

It is now 8 weeks since the NUST AGM and 4 weeks since the publication of election results to the NUST Board. In that time, contrary to promises made at the AGM, no attempt has been made to interact or consult with the wider fan base. This doesn't surprise me; it should, but it doesn't. This depresses me; it shouldn't, but it does. It is also 1 week since "Stand" issue #7 was published, with this article by me in it.... I think it rather relevant....

We must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this… or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. Lenin; Lessons of the Moscow Uprising.

Without question, the internet has had many positive effects on the nature and culture of being a football supporter in the 21^st Century.  Aided by a quick-fire cyber evolution over the past decade that has seen fans interacting and organising through the influence of independent websites, message boards, blogs and social media platforms, Twitter in particular, it has become far easier to discuss not just your club, on line and in real life, but the myriad, disparate elements that combine to make up the life of the contemporary fan, many of whom say they are, at some elemental if ill-defined level, #AgainstModernFootball.

I presume you noticed my semi-ironic use of the typography consistent with a Twitter hashtag at the end of the previous paragraph; this is on account of a process of social media Darwinism, which has seen Twitter wipe the floor with every rival in terms of finding a place for fans of different teams to interact. It is necessary, however shambolically, to get on the dance floor. While most message boards provide team-specific emotional support networks or alternately bear pit on-line fight clubs for fans who vary from laidback dabblers in search of general chat to alpha male, testosterone infused, swivel eyed zealots, the general message board now seems a curious anachronism. Well-meaning dullards with social consciences on their sleeves populate The Guardian, while non-match going polyversity Media Studies and Sociology dropouts lamely attempt to outdo each other in the postmodern, ironic stakes on the like of the frighteningly precious WSC forum. 5,000 word polysyllabic posts simply don’t grab the attention of today’s crusading #AgainstModernFootball cultural gauleiter, not when they have 140 characters, as well as an appended smartphone snap, to describe a Casual Connoisseur polo shirt to feast their intellect on instead.

My league club is Newcastle United; I’ve seen them twice in 2013/2014, preferring instead to concern myself with the role of programme editor at my local non-league side, Heaton Stannington of Northern League Division 2, though I am deeply involved with the pressure group NUFC Fans United. Despite media suggestions to the contrary, many of which are unquestioningly accepted and embellished by followers of other clubs, Newcastle United’s support isn’t predominantly composed of fickle, impatient post 92, replica shirt wearing Sky fans demanding the return of Keegan and a Champions’ League win yesterday. Newcastle United fans, by and large, are ordinary football fans, just like you, who care passionately about the fortunes of their club. Some of them wear club shop tat, while others sashay up the Barrack Road catwalk in designer garb that must cost far more than their annual season ticket. I can’t even begin to speculate how they afford to dress like that.

When people ask me, at work, at Heaton Stan games, in the pub or on Twitter, whether it is difficult for me not to watch my team play, I reply that it is almost impossible, but my personal mantra remains that where Newcastle United finish in the league and who plays for or manages of the team is utterly irrelevant while Mike Ashley owns the club. My unshakeable belief is that we need Mike Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though I am prepared to accept 51% Fan Ownership as a transitional demand. I realise my view is a minority one, but I hold it fervently and constantly seek to persuade other fans, in the flesh and on Twitter, of the veracity of my belief. Unfortunately, I’m not having much luck, as an insidious apolitical, materialist weltanschauung appears to be gaining currency among those who would consider themselves the advanced section of NUFC’s support.

The quotation that prefaces this article is an appropriate one; supporters of Lenin, then and now, see themselves as part of a self-selected revolutionary vanguard, perhaps small in number and generally slavishly devoted to some charismatic autodidactic absolute ideological leader, but advanced in terms of their political understanding and ability to guide the masses in the correct direction to enhance their political demands. Frankly, as a subscriber to the anti-authoritarian avowedly Marxist theories posited by the Situationist International, such a standpoint nauseates me, but also it begins to alarm me, more and more, especially as I see Twitter as being the breeding ground for similar wrongheaded, perhaps unconsciously proto Leninist philosophical theories among football fans, especially at my own club.

Despite the above average season on the pitch, supporter unrest with the toxic Ashley regime is growing on Tyneside; membership of NUFC Fans United and the moribund FSF approved Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust is massively up and a march before the Liverpool home game, under the banner Time For Change was well attended, even by those well-meaning types in Wonga replica tops who had previously steadfastly claimed they were only interested in supporting the team on the pitch. This to me was a glorious affirmation of the Situationist concept of spectacle, as Guy Debord described it; a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambience and a game of events. It was a revolutionary moment for almost all Newcastle United fans and garnered almost universal supporter approval. However those among the support who were most conspicuous by their absence from the march, from subsequent engagement with fans’ groups and from any meaningful involvement in attempting to save the soul of the clubs are those who it seems are most likely to use #AMF as a hashtag, as #AMF appears to mean little else other than a shallow insistence on being conspicuously attired in exclusive threads on a match day.

Indeed, the majority of them took to Twitter to denounce and denigrate those who took part, generally on the superficial basis of the attire of the marchers. Such appalling commodity fetishism is the clearest example imaginable of false consciousness among a layer of NUFC’s support whose inertia and social media profile mark them out to be de facto ideologically right wing, whether they accept this or not. Marking the distinction between the haves and the have nots in terms of their wardrobe is Thatcherism, pure and simple.

I think it undeniable that many current football casuals, as opposed to the originals from the 80s, are middle-class, conformist, affluent and socially, if not politically, conservative. They probably view any suggestion they are either Leninists or Thatcherites with equal bemused revulsion, but their class origins and loyalties perhaps need serious consideration. Certainly, to be able to afford £600 jackets one must have a more than decent income. While some of those espousing the quality of 6876 do have a public school education, this is by no means compulsory. As the Duke of Wellington observed, one does not need to have been born in a stable to be a horse; conformist attitudes, such as veneration of the forces of social control, by criticising players such as James McClean who chose not to wear a remembrance poppy, or regarding the inquest verdict after the execution of Mark Duggan as right and proper, on account of ideological proximity to the police, seem to as common among the bona drag popinjays as the replica shirt wearers.

However, there is an even more bizarre ironic inconsistency to the confused ideology of a gang who are closer to Leon Brittain than Leon Trotsky. Thursday evenings allows the Materialist Marxists to remember their social conscience for an hour; Question Time sees them attempting to be more Karl Marx than Karl Lagerfeld. In such a limited time scale and on such a restricted platform, they denounce coalition politicians with a scorn normally reserved for their opinions of less well dressed NUFC fans. In my eyes though, adopting such a stance, as well as an #AMF hashtag does not materially advance the cause of football fans one iota.

Football fans, at Newcastle United as at every club, whether they shop at Peaceful Hooligan or Primark, are of equal value and equal validity. We are all one and we are all equal. We do not need charismatic self-appointed leaders imposing their will on the minority of servile self-interested camp followers of such quasi dictators, while claiming this is the authentic voice of the #AMF tendency. The game is ours; the clubs are ours. Let us unite democratically, as we are all of equal worth and have the right to an equal voice, and seek to assume what is culturally, spiritually and emotionally rightfully ours. Let’s be properly UNITED.

Eyes & Ears 1

I'd like to dedicate this first cultural blog of the year to Bob Crow; an indefatigable fighter for the working class, an inspirational orator and  a devoted Socialist. He saw the madness in our area and his legacy must be for us all to carry on the fight. His was a life well lived but ended too soon.

So, 2014 is almost a quarter of the way through already and I’ve not taken the time to discuss my cultural meanderings with my readership as yet. This is the time for that action I feel. Firstly I have to say that certain aspects of my potential intellectual enrichment have been forced to take a back seat, partly because of indolence and partly because of pressure of time, what with having my mam in hospital for 6 weeks and the attendant stress caused by that. Television has been off the agenda; Inspector George Gently and Moone Boy are about the only things that aren’t news or football related that I would have bothered with anyway and both series are stacked up on Sky + waiting for me to sort my life out. You see Moone Boy is on a Monday and I play football 6-7 every week, as well as Team Northumbria having 3 successive home games on those nights; what’s a fella to do? I also play on a Thursday between 9 and 10, so Martin Shaw’s magnum opus has similarly been rusticated. Less forgivable has been my lack of reading, but here goes for an analysis of what I’ve actually got round to flicking through.

Books:

Ken Sproat has been my mate for a long, long time; we share mutual love of The Fall, loony left politics and non-league football. We are now both published authors as Ken has issued the product of a decade’s devoted research, The History of Blyth Spartans. In painstaking, minute detail, Ken tells the story of football in his south east Northumberland home town from the earliest mid Victorian days until the present. The result is an absolutely exhaustive account of his club’s triumphs and travails. I found both the detailed accounts of the early years and the section from the mid-70s onwards, because the latter is when my football awareness grew beyond simply the upper ranks of the professional game, to be particularly fascinating. A joy to read and a bottomless treasure trove of recondite trivia that both fascinates and delights. I thoroughly recommend it.

I also recommend Borrokaria (The Fighter), by the Basque novelist Bernardo Atxaga, which was given to me by my cousin John, when he was over from Vitoria Gasteiz for our Uncle Harry’s funeral at the end of January. The novel is made up of three different short and intrinsically and intricately inter-related texts. In the first, a man who recalls his past and fears his decline meets his destiny; he is no longer the strongest man in the area, as his son fights him to prove that the next generation is the older one’s nemesis. In the second, another man, possibly the victorious son, writes about the boxing match he’s about to fight in in Reno, Nevada and in the third the narrator reflects on the images that people leave behind when they die, especially when the dead is the once proud son who has turned into a traitor to the very people who idolised his youthful bravery. Three different texts, a single story, beautifully and sparingly written, it combines deep compassion with unforgiving judgement. A stunning and effective novella that makes me anxious to read more of Atxaga’s work.

The only other book I’ve got through this year is Eric Sykes’s rambling and desperately uneven autobiography; If I Don’t Write It, Nobody Else Will. The problem is that Sykes may have been a great writer of sketches and gags, but he was a dreadful writer of prose, especially during the latter sections of the book, which are less than scintillating as Sykes cuts his losses with television and settles into life as a national treasure. It's a charmed life, for which Sykes repeatedly credits the supernatural guidance of his mother, who died giving birth, and one does not begrudge him an ounce of his success, particularly given the debilitating struggle with deafness which began in early middle age. Yet Sykes's rambling reminiscences acquire a rather cloying air of complacency as he becomes successful; of far more interest is his unsentimental account of his poverty stricken Oldham childhood and his wartime experiences that make the struggle to defeat the Third Reich seem more like outtakes from a lost Will Hay comedy or a prototype Carry On wheeze. At least he doesn’t come across as a grade 1 bastard, unlike Milligan or Sellers for example.

Theatre:

My only previous visit to the Customs House in South Shields was to see The Fall in October 1996; in the very worst of his Jeffrey Barnard inspired tantrums, a babbling, incoherent and excessively refreshed Mark E Smith failed to take the stage, meaning the gig was pulled, the scuffers called and several protesting fans lead away in cuffs. A bad night. On February 13^th, I returned in the company of my friend Gary on a pair of freebies to see a play, Away From Home, about the relationship between a young man and a Premier League footballer. Kyle, a young male prostitute who refuses to work on Saturdays during the football season, gets a call from his pimp as he is watching the match with his macho mates in the pub. The pimp has a special client. It is the footballer who has just scored the last-minute equaliser against Kyle’s team. Intrigued he agrees to the job.

What follows is an accomplished one-man performance from Ward which tells the story of Kyle’s strained relationship with his parents, his deep friendship with his best mate Mac from whom he hides his sexuality, and the job which turns to an affair with the top Premiership footballer who goes out drinking with buxom beards after the match, for the cameras, but then returns to the city-centre penthouse he has bought for Kyle. The twist, whereby Kyle’s Dad’s terminal illness affects reconciliation between estranged father and son, is corny and only a step away from melodrama.

However, Away From Home was convincing acted by the talented Ward and has as much to say about the confines of expected sporting behaviour as it does about the institutionally homophobic nature of professional football. Hopefully this play, written by the gay football fanatic Ward, can educate those involved in football about the dated, destructive intolerance of homophobia and explain to those from outside the game that simple act of coming out is not always a viable option for those at the highest levels of football, because of a multiple matrix of complex and competing social influences.

Music:

Three purchased CDs and three gigs so far; let’s start off with the familiar location of Fairport Convention’s 2014 Winter Tour stop off at Sage Hall 2.

Later this year Fairport Convention hope to record their first album of new songs for some time. Test-driving the new material live brings welcome variety to their annual Winter Tour the set list for which in past years had become somewhat familiar. The 2014 Tour takes the group from their earliest techniques into the future. Prior to being pigeonholed as folk-rock pioneers the group had success bringing an English flavour to songs by American singer –songwriters. They return to this approach at the start of their set joining support act Edwina Hayes in a version of John Prine’s Speed of the Sound of Loneliness. The quality of Hayes’s voice is such that the group co-opts her back to the stage during their set to expertly take the vocal parts of the late Sandy Denny on Who Knows Where the Time Goes? and help to build the anthem Meet on the Ledge.

The new material is refreshingly varied ranging from a brooding Home through a lively and bright On Me You Can Depend to straightforward rock. Even the classic material has a fresher quality as the group chooses tunes that haven’t been played live for some years. Doctor of Physick is an unexpected highlight, while the raucous jig and reel Dirty Linen offers a particular challenge for Matthew Pegg who has joined the group on bass at short notice after his father Dave was left unable to play due to an injury sustained in a wineglass/dishwasher incident. Rock and roll huh? Pegg Senior acts as a sort of MC introducing the opening and closing numbers, as Fairport Convention enjoy a very close relationship with their audience but do not allow this to hinder the development of momentum that is essential for a successful concert. Hence, the relaxed approach of the band can switch off instantly for the climactic, timeless murder ballad Matty Groves.

The Winter Tour of 2014 is a welcome demonstration that, even after more than 45 years in showbiz, Fairport Convention are unwilling to rest on their laurels preferring instead to take risks and try out new material, unlike the first CD to be discussed.

The New Mendicants are Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub and Joe Pernice of The Pernice Brothers; last year’s Australia EP was 2013’s stand out short release in my book and their debut full length, Into The Lime, is the best thing I’ve heard so far this year, containing all of the classy songcraft, jangling guitars, and big harmonies fans expected. It almost comes as a relief that the two beloved songsmiths didn't use this project as a platform for some other sort of wild artistic experimentation. Along with drummer Mike Belitsky, the only native Canadian in this Toronto-based trio, Blake and Pernice play to their strengths, delivering ten strong songs that echo not just their own bands, but classic '60s influences like the Hollies and the Byrds. From the opening organ/piano riff of the brilliant Sarasota, the band's arrangements are subtly thrilling, yet comfortably laid-back. There's a very relaxed, unhurried atmosphere to the album which speaks of the members' many years of friendship and combined studio experience. The sublime Cruel Annette blends the two singers' styles into something new for both.

Several of the album's songs were originally intended to soundtrack the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel A Long Way Down, but ended up on the cutting room floor. However, even when the Mendicants are singing about suicide and depression, like on A Very Sorry Christmas Eve, they insist on those big harmonic choruses which have melted the hearts of so many Teenage Fanclub listeners over the past 20-odd years. There are buzzy guitars along with piano and organ ornamentations that will please fans of orchestrated pop, but the focus remains largely on the top-notch songwriting and the pleasing blend of voices and familiar styles. While it would be a shame to let the Mendicants' future impede the progress of any new records by the group's flagship bands, this is a wonderful debut and certainly worthy of a follow-up album, especially if they can look at Sandy Denny’s legacy and come up with a song as glorious as By The Time It Gets Dark to admirably cover, or a hoedown stomp like Lifelike Hair that brings proceedings to a close. Very highly recommended.

I had to miss Mogwai’s gig in late January as it was on a Wednesday night and conflicted with my evening class, so I opted to buy their Rave Tapes CD instead, the band's eighth album outside of their soundtrack and remix work. The first song to be released from the album, Remurdered, is something of a red herring. If that song feels like a fuller manifestation of ideas that have taken over a decade for Mogwai to reach, Rave Tapes mostly tells a different story; one that digs harder into a place they've consistently circled back to throughout their career.

This is the second Mogwai album in less than a year, following their creepy 2013 soundtrack to the French TV show Les Revenants. That album is among the most introspective work they've ever recorded and it's a tone they've only modestly advanced on for Rave Tapes. It's not hard to pull all the elements together and theorize at how they arrived at the humorous title for the record, which reads as a direct inverse to the morose worldview of the album and a poke at anyone thinking they’ve "gone electronic." Still, that's hard to square with a track like Master Card, where the circular guitar motions they so often make remain front and centre, and the analog sounds skirting across the surface only serve to keep familiar dynamics intact.

It's been 17 years since Mogwai’s debut, Young Team. There's been a natural fade away from that youthful starting point, as well there should be, but still, there are elements left behind from that on Rave Tapes, such as the astonishing ebb and flow of Mogwai Fear Satan, or even getting Roky Erickson to guest on a track.  Rave Tapes is the work of an oddly conservative band, turning away from the openness they once embraced. At some point Mogwai got less interested in testing the boundaries of their music, instead settling for being comfortable working within them. The bassy keyboard grind that emerges at times is a new appendage, but the material it's dressed up in strains under the weight of familiarity, ultimately resembling an exercise in Mogwai box-ticking. It's hard to shake the feeling that this is a band trapped in their own creation, occasionally looking for somewhere else to go but unable or unwilling to fully get there. Frankly, it’s more Tangerine Dream than Throbbing Gristle.

Most groups don't leave behind the core signifiers that bring them attention in the first place, so Mogwai are far from an isolated case when it comes to looping back on themselves, but it does make the level of complacency they're operating at now such a baffling and frustrating end game to it all. At this point it feels like there isn't anywhere else they can go with this music, so infinitesimally small are the strides taken toward a better place. Mogwai have worked heavily in the visual realm in the last year, on Les Revenants and a live performance of their Zidane soundtrack. Maybe the cliché about instrumental bands creating "soundtracks for films that don't exist" has a grain of truth for them after all. Here, Mogwai’s cautionary approach all but drowns out the faint echoes of the once brave band struggling to get out from within. Download only; don’t buy it.

Instead, spend your money on the Band of Holy Joy’s truly splendid Easy Listening for Difficult Times. Geordie hero Johny Brown, still with the magnificent Bill Lewington on drums, has assembled another superb set of musicians to produce the band’s eighteenth long-player, all told. In a thirty-year career that’s reignited three or four times, what’s immediately striking is the regularity with which they’ve hit new high points. They may have seemed to peak in the late 1980s with the classic Manic, Magic, Majestic, but the recent run of Paramour, How to Kill a Butterfly and The North is Another Land, have been of a uniformly superb quality and Easy Listening is BOHJ at their unsettling best. The music, as ever, is enough to make your heart soar. The strings, the piano, the horns and those whipcrack drums all combine to propel Johny on to an ever more passionate recounting of his extraordinary, everyday stories.

Never is this clearer than in There Was a Fall/The Fall, the finest song he has been responsible for since Fishwives, What the Moon Saw or Job Shop. It is a song about Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper seller who was murdered by the police in 2009. There Was a Fall/The Fall is  as unnerving as one would expect from a song that draws on coroner's report-style cold anatomic detail for lyrics, performed with a snarl that, apart from this pared down objectivity, points up a glaring social injustice. It's a potent, furious way of addressing a death that fits into a long cycle of police brutality; a grimly medical account of the consequences of the barbarous assault in question set to a thrilling freeform accompaniment. It was brilliant live, when they played The Cluny 2 on March 2^nd. In the presence of Rob Blamire, Gary Chaplin and Pauline Murray, BOHJ did a fabulous version of Don’t Dictate as well. I’ve followed Johny’s career since I saw his first band Speed at the University Theatre sit-in back in August 1977, days after I turned 13, and his art is as great now as it has ever been.  Buy this album and go and see The Band of Holy Joy if you can.

Finally, back in 1977, when I fell in love with Penetration, I hardly imagined that by the time I grew up I’d be pals with them, but that is what has somehow happened. Indeed, Rob and guitarist Paul are also work colleagues. Paul’s former band Nancy bone reformed for a one-off support slot, doing the greatest hits of 1977; everything from The Floral Dance to Heroes to an absolutely blinding Whole Wide World. However, they were only the support, though I thoroughly enjoyed them. Here I was, 36 years later, watching Penetration with my FPX mate Raga, with my son Ben, who went to school with Rob and Pauline’s kids, accompanying us. Guess what? It was fucking mesmerising; Don’t Dictate, Free Money, Life’s A Gamble, Danger Signs and Stone Heroes, the lyrics of which Raga purloined for his O Level English Language essay and gained a B for, all killed it for me. Age shall not wither this lot; brilliant to see and hear. Amazingly, each of the gigs I’ve been to so far this year has been faultless; let’s hope this continues.

One for the Connoisseur.....

Last weekend, Newcastle played Hull City and the Mackems lost, humiliatingly & hilariously, to Man City. The last time I remember that happening was on 11^th May 1991, at the end of the most boring season in Newcastle United’s history. On that day, the vile Mr Charity Broadband Quinn, was instrumental in relegating sunderland, proving he's only ever had his own interests at heart & not theirs; I'd like to dedicate Toure, Navas & Nasri's goals to him. As a former citeh player, I'm sure he enjoyed them. Going back to thinking about the 1990/1991 campaign, which was the greatest example of sporting ennui I could possibly imagine, I decided to pen something brief about it, for this Saturday's Heaton Stannington programme for the visit of Darlington Railway Athletic. I set myself the task of writing a 1 sentence review of all 46 league games and 5 cup ties that comprised our race to assure the highly coveted 13^th place in Division 2. Here goes, with a picture especially selected for Declan McGrath who made his first visit to St. James' Park for the dismal 1-0 victory over Watford on 24th November 1990…

Sat 25 Aug 1990 PLYMOUTH ARGYLE

H League W 2-0 Benny Kristensen’s quickfire double caused opening day optimism.

Sat 01 Sep 1990 Blackburn Rovers

A League W 1-0 Liam O’Brien’s 97th winner caused bedlam on the crumbling Darwen End terrace

Sat 08 Sep 1990 MILLWALL

H League L 1-2 Jimmy Carter looked well worth the £800k Dalglish was to waste on him on this performance.

Sat 15 Sep 1990 Port Vale

A League W 1-0 We always won at Vale Park.

Tue 18 Sep 1990 Sheffield Wednesday

A League D 2-2 Neil Simpson actually played and we conceded a 90th minute equaliser.

Sat 22 Sep 1990 WEST HAM UNITED

H League D 1-1 Burridge threw two points away, being caught in front of the East Stand and trying to play right back.

Tue 25 Sep 1990 Middlesbrough

A League Cup L 0-2 The usual hammering at Beastville.

Sat 29 Sep 1990 Bristol City

A League L 0-1 Kevin Carr sent off and that’s about it.

Wed 03 Oct 1990 MIDDLESBROUGH

H League D 0-0 Mickey Quinn sent off for not kicking Pears in the head.

Sat 06 Oct 1990 PORTSMOUTH

H League W 2-1 John Anderson’s own goal; I wrote about it here http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/false-memory-syndrome.html  

Wed 10 Oct 1990 MIDDLESBROUGH

H League Cup W 1-0 An all ticket crowd of less than 13k

Sat 13 Oct 1990 Oxford United

A League D 0-0 A game of staggering ineptitude

Sat 20 Oct 1990 Ipswich Town

A League L 1-2 Kristensen sent off in a rather bad tempered encounter.

Wed 24 Oct 1990 CHARLTON ATHLETIC

H League L 1-3 A deplorable defeat

Sat 27 Oct 1990 WEST BROMWICH ALBION

H League D 1-1 Missed O’Brien’s equaliser having a second half time pint.

Sat 03 Nov 1990 Hull City

A League L 1-2 Great weekend down at my sister’s student gaffe, ruined by a rank game.

Sat 10 Nov 1990 Wolverhampton Wanderers

A League L 1-2 Lee Clark’s first goal, but a dreadful defeat

Sat 17 Nov 1990 BARNSLEY

H League D 0-0 My first proper date with my ex-wife, who is a Barnsley fan; yes, my ex-wife

Sat 24 Nov 1990 WATFORD

H League W 1-0 Gary Porter skied a penalty and Quinn converted one on a freezing afternoon.

Sat 01 Dec 1990 Leicester City

A League L 4-5 Entertaining, but ultimately fruitless afternoon.

Sun 16 Dec 1990 Plymouth Argyle

A League W 1-0 Gavin Peacock’s winner caused Charles Harrison to have hysterics on Metro.

Sat 22 Dec 1990 Bristol Rovers

A League D 1-1 Was still in bed at full time after a decent night out.

Wed 26 Dec 1990 SWINDON TOWN

H League D 1-1 Dillon missed from 6 inches out at the Leazes End.

Sat 29 Dec 1990 NOTTS. COUNTY

H League L 0-2 Quite embarrassing, to say the least.

Tue 01 Jan 1991 Oldham Athletic

A League D 1-1 Stimson’s OG 30 seconds from time ruined the New Year.

Sat 05 Jan 1991 DERBY COUNTY

H F.A. Cup W 2-0 Stimson’s wonderful free kick and Quinn’s thumping volley caused a giant killing.

Sat 12 Jan 1991 BLACKBURN ROVERS

H League W 1-0 Dave Mitchell became an NUFC legend…

Wed 16 Jan 1991 Brighton & Hove Albion

A League L 2-4 Mike Small (remember him?) tortured us

Sat 19 Jan 1991 Millwall

A League W 1-0 Brave win against the odds.

Sat 02 Feb 1991 PORT VALE

H League W 2-0 Delicious Gavin Peacock lob sealed victory.

Wed 13 Feb 1991 NOTTINGHAM FOREST

H F.A. Cup D 2-2 If Steve Watson had accepted that chance to make it 3-0….

Mon 18 Feb 1991 Nottingham Forest

A F.A. Cup L 0-3 Live on TV, we got humped.

Sat 23 Feb 1991 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS

H League D 0-0 Paul Moran’s entire NUFC career, ended by him missing an open goal.

Wed 27 Feb 1991 BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBION

H League D 0-0 Cold and terrible.

Sat 02 Mar 1991 LEICESTER CITY

H League W 2-1 Warm and terrible, but we won.

Sat 09 Mar 1991 Watford

A League W 2-1 John Anderson scored the last goal David James conceded for Watford.

Tue 12 Mar 1991 Middlesbrough

A League L 0-3 Steve Watson’s forward roll and a predictable hammering.

Sat 16 Mar 1991 BRISTOL CITY

H League D 0-0 Utterly appalling.

Sat 23 Mar 1991 Portsmouth

A League W 1-0 Jim Smith’s last game; typically he quits after we win.

Sat 30 Mar 1991 Swindon Town

A League L 2-3 Ardiles plots our downfall, then joins straight afterwards.

Mon 01 Apr 1991 BRISTOL ROVERS

H League L 0-2 The bounce a new manager can bring….

Sat 06 Apr 1991 Notts. County

A League L 0-3 The biggest humping of the season.

Wed 10 Apr 1991 OXFORD UNITED

H League D 2-2 Brian Stein’s classic volley in the famous replayed 10,004 game.

Sat 13 Apr 1991 OLDHAM ATHLETIC

H League W 3-2 We looked like Brazil 70 for the first hour of this one.

Wed 17 Apr 1991 SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY

H League W 1-0 Kevin Brock’s mishit cross won it for us.

Sat 20 Apr 1991 IPSWICH TOWN

H League D 2-2 Decent, end to end game actually.

Wed 24 Apr 1991 West Ham United

A League D 1-1 Charles Harrison claimed we were magnificent in this one.

Sat 27 Apr 1991 Charlton Athletic

A League L 0-1 We weren’t three days later on our next trip to the smoke.

Sat 04 May 1991 West Bromwich Albion

A League D 1-1 The Baggies went down after this one; sorry lads.

Tue 07 May 1991 Barnsley

A League D 1-1 A stylish performance on a lovely, sunny evening.

Sat 11 May 1991 HULL CITY

H League L 1-2 Lee Clark’s blinding goal on the day the Mackems went down.

Ton Tons Black & White Macoutes!!

0-1 v Arsenal, 0-2 v citeh, 0-3 v Mackems; I was only being half serious when I confidently predicted 0-4 v Spurs the other week. Sometimes I hate being right; this was one of them. I wasn’t just right about the score but, seeing his atrocious performance that night, but my regular comments about the awful all-round game of Tim Krul were shown to be accurate as well. Responsible for 3 of the goals, his errors were thrown into sharp relief by Fraser Forster breaking the all-time record for clean sheets in Scotch football. The more time passes, the more obvious it becomes that Newcastle United made the wrong decision about which keeper to keep and which to sell.

Still, one positive for me was that I wasn’t at the Spurs debacle, on account of needing to work. If I had been able to go, I could have taken my pick from about a dozen free tickets I was offered by text, by Twitter, by email and via Facebook. Watching the last 30 minutes on a live feed, it appeared that the crowd was still well above 40,000 though nowhere near the claimed 48,000. Well done to all the Free Ticket Mags who declined to put money in Ashley’s pocket by buying tickets from the club.

The reason for the gaps in the crowd is no mystery; the toxic disaster that is Ashley’s ownership of the club is continuing to destroy the collective esprit de corps of the NUFC support. Pardew’s smug stupidity and tactical incompetence, welded to an unfeeling, asset stripping regime, has imbued a sense of either despair or indifference in almost every sentient Newcastle fan, where “habit” or “the chance of a few pints with the lads” are about the only reasons offered by lifelong match going Mags for their continued attendance at SJP, not to mention the utterly baffling situation whereby seemingly sane and rational people stump up the thick end of £200 for away games. While it is palpable nonsense to claim we’ve got anything other than a decent top 8 squad, even if all bets are off for next season, the whole ambience surrounding the club is at its lowest ebb since the death agonies of the Jim Smith regime in 1990/1991. Apathy is the key word. Why else could FTM and SAFC graffiti remain unchecked on a billboard on Grey Street in North Shields for upwards of a fortnight? Yes, that’s right; unblemished Mackem graffiti in North Shields. You couldn’t make this sort of stuff up.

The players’ reward for the Spurs performance was the free weekend occasioned by the FA Cup fifth round; obviously Newcastle United don’t do cup football.  Consequently, the gap in fixtures allowed the support to brood on the situation and, being frank, optimism was in distinctly short supply. The postponement of Heaton Stan’s home game against Chester Le Street allowed me the honour of attending the latest NUFC Fans United meeting on Tuesday 18^th February at the Irish Club. As Karl Marx so sagely pointed out; "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." This is why the attendance was triple the previous one, which I found to be greatly encouraging.

It was also particularly encouraging to see that so many Fans’ Forum representatives were in attendance; having been relentlessly denigrated by True Faith, these fine, upstanding ordinary fans clearly see that NUFC Fans United remain the best way of holding meaningful dialogue with fans, especially with the unwelcome news that Lee Marshall screens all emails sent to Fans’ Forum members, though this questionable practise may change in the foreseeable future. It has to, if a spirit of transparent honesty is to be maintained; at the present time, the Fans’ Forum and NUFC Fans United are the only practical ways in which ordinary day to day dialogue between fans and the club can be conducted. Whatever we think of the club hierarchy, the fact remains there will continue to be ordinary matters of housekeeping that need to be attended to on a daily basis. The present mechanism offers a way for this to happen and I would question the motives of anyone seeking to destroy such lines of communication.

The evening began with an account from the coaches of Newcastle United Women’s Football Club of their financial difficulties and the lack of support they’d had from the club. As a lover of the amateur game, I found this to be an appalling state of affairs, but so did Supporters’ Liaison Officer Lee Marshall, who seemed genuinely disturbed by what he heard. I don’t know if he can make a difference in the future, but if his concern had a monetary value, NUWFC will be on a sounder footing in the future.

Next up a representative from that dynastic haven for resting Trotskyists, the Football Supporters’ Federation, a Mackem called Michael Brunskill whose mother is a sometime comrade of the absent FSF ruler Kevin “Air” Miles, who was unavoidably detained sipping Caipirinhas on the Copocabana, turned up to provide a hagiographic oration as to the unending perfection of True Faith magazine. Perhaps young Michael ought to have checked his audience before opening his big gob, as in attendance were several members of the Newcastle United Fans’ Forum, who have been on the end of unending on-line obloquy from that publication of late, much to their chagrin it has to be said. Indeed, with 2 possible exceptions of those present in that room, it would have to be said that True Faith’s stance has had the effect of alienating many of Newcastle United’s most loyal supporters. However, parking that thought for the moment, Kim Jong-Brunskill did make the excellent point that the Football Supporters Federation is free to join and doing so in no way endorses their partnership with bookmakers William Hill, who sponsored their awards last year, where Stand AMF, for whom I write, won the Fanzine of the Year award. Go to http://www.fsf.org.uk/join/ and give some of the Shachmanite soccerphiles some of their entrist medicine.

Talking of entrism, the day before the NUFC Fans United meeting, NUST had announced the results of their elections. It had been my stated intention to stand in this process but, as many of you are aware, the on-going situation with my mother’s ill health (she has been in North Tyneside General Hospital for over a month now with delirium associated with vascular dementia and, as yet, we have no indication of when she will be allowed home and what her future home life will consist of) means that I have neither the time nor the energy to devote sufficient attention to saving both my club and the reputation of NUST among the wider supporter base, as well as the current membership of approximately 771. Consequently, the election was uncontested; Peter Fanning, the person whose name was put to the appalling breach of protocol that saw NUST excluded from the Fans Forum by posting the minutes of that initial meeting before the club did, and Colin Whittle were re-elected. As yet I’m unaware of which 3 of the previous board have stood down, but they have been replaced by Mike Ashley Out Campaign leader Graeme Cansdale, NUFC Daily Blog author Ciaran Donaghy and Michael Martin, editor of the Baltic Publications magazine True Faith.

Considering the fraught nature of NUFC fan politics, it was wonderful to see two of the newly elected NUST board members Graeme and Ciaran at the NUFC Fans United meeting. From chats with both of them, I can happily state they are lifelong Mags and are the kind of quiet, sincere grafters NUST needs on its board if they are going to keep the promise made at their AGM and attempt to engage meaningfully with ordinary members of the Trust. Sadly, because of NUST’s conduct after the first Fans’ Forum meeting, they have proved themselves to be currently unfit for the purpose of representing ordinary non NUST members among the support, because of their intransigence in refusing to apologise for their breach of protocol in posting the minutes of the first meeting before the agreed embargo had expired. As an ordinary member of NUST’s rank and file, I remain appalled by this error, either of tactics or judgement, and feel that until such time as NUST gets its act together, then NUFC Fans United will remain the only legitimate voice of NUFC’s supporter base; out ballot box outgunning NUST’s decommissioned Armalite, as it were.However, I do still hold a residual belief in the potential of NUST to effect positive change. It was interesting to see a young intern in attendance who is doing some work for the NUST Board on supporter engagement; better late than never I suppose.

I came away from the NUFC Fans United meeting utterly energised by the positivity in the room, especially by the enthusiasm and integrity displayed by Graeme and Ciaran. I let both of them know, as an ordinary NUST member, that I feel they are charged with the responsibility of making NUST relevant among our support again. In my opinion, as an organisation, NUST has been dormant to the point of anonymity since the previous elections in 2010. I find it bitterly ironic that they have been unable to respond to the shifting tectonic plates of fan outrage during this time; last October’s Time 4 Change march offered them the perfect opportunity to reanimate themselves, but nothing happened other than the woeful mismanagement of the offer of a place at the Fans’ Forum. Now, with Graeme and Ciaran on the board, there is a chance for new blood to step up to the plate and really make a difference. However, I made it clear to both Ciaran and Graeme that as an ordinary member of NUST; I had some serious questions to ask of the Trust. While it could be argued that NUST deserve one last clean slate, lessons must be drawn from the errors of the past.

Unfortunately, as NUST has opted over the past few years only to meet with members at its AGM, it is very difficult to ask questions of the Trust in a meaningful, public way. Consequently, I posted my proposed questions on Twitter to the accounts of @nufctrust, as well as the personal accounts of @Mike_Ashley_Out, @CiaranD1892and @tfeditor1892 as I felt this was a way of opening up public discussion. I also emailed the Trust with my three questions, in the hope of eliciting a response.

I was somewhat taken aback a few days later to receive an invite to attend the next NUST board meeting on Tuesday 11^th March, in order that I could ask my questions in person. Clearly, I had to decline their offer as I feel it rather undermines the promise made at their AGM that NUST will become more transparent and less distant from ordinary members, by organising public meetings which will allow NUST rank and file to interact with Board Members.  The fact is this; I am an ordinary member of NUST and do not require any special treatment from the Board, flattering though the offer was. However, I did congratulate the NUST board on their decision to become more accountable and outward facing. Certainly I look forward to being informed of the date of NUST’s next public meeting, when I can ask my questions in person. Clearly, if the promised meeting takes place, then my first question, namely what measures will the NUST board be taking to directly engage with NUST membership? will have been answered. The other questions will keep until this meeting as I believe they are in the wider interest of ordinary NUST members and NUFC fans as a whole and need to be given a public airing.

Hopefully, the meeting will include more dialogue than the eerie, resigned silence that permeated much of the opening 75 minutes of the Aston Villa game. Before the game I’d seen Graeme Cansdale distributing his Mike Ashley Out Campaign leaflets outside Shearer’s, while True Faith writer Chris Betts was inside, drinking a pint of Coors, which he described as “nothing to write home about.” Let me make it abundantly clear, I wasn’t spending my money in there; I’d nipped into Shearer’s to use the toilet and was astonished to see a collection of SV Salzburg fans, on a fact finding tour of the north east in relation to their on-going campaign for wider  fan ownership in game, occasioned by Red Bull’s destruction of their club and the need to form a new one (see http://www.austria-salzburg.at/en/history/a-bitter-end-and-a-new-beginning/ for a full explanation) supping within. As a result, I spent much of the game musing on the bitter irony of such people giving their money to Mike Ashley. Incredible isn’t it?

Attending this match with my son Ben and my Hibee mate, Graham who edits Mass Hibsteria and who is also a Newcastle fan, I had an existential crisis at half time. After 45 banal minutes of disengaged players phoning in an abject non-performance in front of tetchy, fraught, disenfranchised fans, enlivened only by Cisse’s ludicrous miss in injury time, I asked myself; what am I doing here? Honestly, it’s gone; Heaton Stannington is where my heart is. My desperate sadness is that, aged 18, Ben appears to have wearied of the whole charade.

But we must never give up; the lifting of everyone’s spirits when honest Mike Williamson cut out Benteke’s chance of giving Villa a goal woke the stadium up. Even when Remy hit the inside of the post on 88 minutes, we didn’t waver and the winner, when it came, was rapturously received, even if there was a sense of disappointment we didn’t win by 2 goals which would have entitled us all to half price Papa Doc Duvalier pizzas, as NUFC’s transfat takeaway partner of choice.

Let’s be serious though, the deafening noise when Remy scored is precisely why NUFC still matter; this is why we have to fight for our club. The solemn, silent march away from the ground proved this to me even more; the support realises that the 3 points, however welcome, are currently meaningless, whatever tedious waffle Pards relates to this game, which may well have been my third and final visit to SJP in 2013/2014.

The fact is this; where the club finishes, as well as who plays for or who manages us, while Ashley remains the owner, is utterly meaningless. We need Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though 51% Fan Ownership as a transitional demand is acceptable. I would hope NUST are the organisation to energise the support towards a successful campaign for this end, but this really is their last chance to prove they have the heart to lead the fight. If they prove themselves unwilling or unable to do so, the loose amalgam of NUFC Fans United will always be there to provide fans with a voice. Comrades, seize the day.

On The Road

It was the FA Cup fifth round last weekend. Obviously Newcastle didn't have a game and could enjoy a week earned rest after three successive hammerings in the league. One of those at Chelsea had me shaking my head and questioning just why would anyone pay £50 for a ticket and the thick end of £200 in travel and beer to watch an inevitable defeat. Many years ago I used to travel in expectation rather than hope; not just with Newcastle, but sometimes with Barnsley as well. Here's an article about being part of Barnsley's away following, which will be in West Stand Bogs issue #3.....

As pointed out in issues 1 & 2 of West Stand Bogs, not to mention about a dozen times in various copies of South Riding (RIP), my team is actually Newcastle United. However, because of marital connections in the Darton area, I followed Barnsley as a second team throughout the 1990s. My first game at Oakwell, supporting the home team, was a 2-0 victory over Bristol City, for whom Gary Shelton was red carded, on New Year’s Day 1991 and my final time on the terraces down Grove Street way saw QPR beaten 1-0 in August 2002. While I attended, at a rough estimate, about 5 games a season at Oakwell during this period, the chance to see the Reds away from home was much more limited, bearing in mind my NUFC commitments. In fact, other than at St. James’s Park, I only saw Barnsley play at 3 other grounds, none of which are in use any longer, strangely enough.

Firstly, and most painfully, were my trips to my nearest and not so dearest local rivals; sunderland. While I didn’t get to see the 2-0 loss on New Year’s Day 1992 as we were down in South Yorkshire for the festivities, taking in Sheffield Wednesday 1 Oldham 1 that day from the top tier of the Leppings Lane with the away fans of course, I was at each and every of the subsequent defeats on Wearside, stood glumly in an exposed corner of the uncovered Roker End, often with my ex-wife’s sister’s ex fiancé, who now works as a barrister in Newcastle (hello Nick,) as Barnsley came up with ever more inventive ways to get beaten by the most repulsive team on the planet.

December 5^th 1992; 1-2 in front of 17,395. Floppy-haired drunk Michael Gray puts them a goal up after 42 seconds, Shaun Cunnington doubles this on the half hour and the consolation is an Ian Sampson own goal (me neither…) after 52 minutes. We had a good drink both before and after mind; The Blue Bell in Seaburn, supposedly a notorious hooligans’ pub though we saw nothing  amiss at all and then a crawl round the Quayside back in civilisation. January 3^rd 1994; 0-1 in the teeming rain in front of 19,302. Phil Gray’s header was cleared off the line by Gary Fleming and his incredible tache, but the linesman said the ball had crossed. A rotten day all round. September 17^th 1994; 0-2 before 16,145. A better day and a better performance, but late goals from Phil Gray and Don Goodman meant another wasted journey. October 28^th 1995; 1-2 with 17,024 onlookers. Andy Liddell scored a goal, the first I’d seen on this ground by a Barnsley player, but it was only a consolation after Craig Russell and Lee Howey had notched for that lot.

After this, the Mackems were out the Barnsley equation for a while, spending a year in the top flight in 96/97 and passing Barnsley on their way back down. By the time the clubs next met, on 21^st November 1998, the game was at the Stadium of Light in front of 40,231; more than double the attendance of each of the previous 5 fixtures between the clubs. Around this time, I’d developed a love of non-league football, which I watch in preference to the professional game these days. Nowadays I edit the programme for Heaton Stannington of Northern League Division 2, but back then I’d just secured a job doing match reports of local games for our regional Sunday paper, The Sunday Sun. Instead of seeing a heroic 3-2 victory with my ex-wife and ex sister in law who had accompanied Nick, where Ashley Ward went from goalscoring hero to red carded villain in 5 minutes, with the points sealed by a late Darren Barnard penalty, I was watching Ashington 0 Horden Colliery Welfare 0 in Northern League Division 2. I suppose I did get paid £20 for the privilege.

Since then, the vagaries of promotion and relegation have meant there has only been one other meeting on Wearside between the two sides; a 2-0 win for the Mackems with a crowd of 27,918 , courtesy of goals by Dean Whitehead and in the last minute by Chris Brown, but nobody was laughing. Hopefully, if Barnsley stay up and the Mackems go down, I can return to Wearside to cheer on an away win in 2014/2015.

In the same way as I managed a clean slate of losses on Wearside, my time following the Tykes on Teesside also produced a 100% record; only this time it was a positive one. In 1991/1992, Middlesbrough were promoted, gaining 80 points in the process and only losing 2 games at home along the way. Incredibly, one of those defeats was to Barnsley, on a mild Monday evening for a rearranged game in mid-April, when 12,473 gathered to languidly watch a smash and grab raid by master tactician Mel Machin. The final score was 1-0 and, try as I might, I can’t remember who scored; all that occurs to me is the relaxed, almost pre-season friendly feel to the whole evening. This was an alien experience to me, as every visit with Newcastle, whether we won, drew or lost, from 1983 onwards, resulted in scenes of incredible violence in the streets around the ground, from psychopathic locals and radgie Geordies prepared to meet them on their own terms. That night, there was nothing untoward aimed at the 101 (I counted) Barnsley fans penned in that little corner of Ayresome Park.

While there were very few at Ayrseome that night, there were 6,500 at Maine Road the following February for a FA Cup fifth round tie. Having been unable to source a ticket for Newcastle’s trip to Blackburn in the same stage of the cup the same day, Nick came to my rescue with a game and travel package, courtesy of a seat on a bus and a place on the Kippax. The transport wasn’t even Side of the Road standard; it was a Yorkshire Traction double decker and I stood both ways. The game itself was poor; City were in steady decline under Brian Horton, but a David White double did for Barnsley, while the Young Guvnors kept up a barrage of missiles across the divide between the fans all game. After the second goal went in, one exasperated Tyke, sick of being pelted with spit, plastic glasses and coins, swilled off the dregs of his plastic mug of Bovril and launched his tartan thermos flask towards the citeh hordes, in a futile gesture of retaliation. The whistle blew soon afterwards and by 7pm we were drinking steadily in The Manx. 

They Used To Play On Grass

On Tuesday 11th February, Heaton Stannington played our first game in a month, defeating Thornaby 1-0 with a 94th minute goal by Phil Smith in atrocious conditions (see photo). In the programme, I penned this short article about the need for 4G pitches in non-league football....

Banquo: It will be rain to-night.
First Murderer: Let it come down. (Macbeth IIIiii)

It’s been wet this winter. So far we’ve seen 3 home league games called off because of our spongy, waterlogged pitch; while the Chester Le Street one is provisionally rescheduled for next Tuesday 18^th February, the Alnwick Town and North Shields games are yet to be given a new date. The postponement of the Shields game was particularly galling; as Newcastle were away to Chelsea, with a certain defeat assured on the back of the previous week’s humiliation, interest in our game was massive. Not only were Shields intending to bring about 200 Ultras (they were meeting in The Corner House at noon!!), but following a twitter campaign around the hashtag #HSFCPartyConference we were looking at a crowd almost as good as the groundhop game against Birtley. Unfortunately, the game fell afoul of the elements; a soaking week was topped off by an overnight downpour in the early hours of Saturday. In all honesty, this was the most frustrating postponement I’d known since Boro infamously called off the home game against Newcastle in February 2003.

The week before when we’d been inactive following the Stokesley postponement, I’d gone to see Benfield’s 1-1 draw with Consett at The Steelmen’s state of the art 4G facility. On a filthy day, both sides were able to play slick, incisive one-touch football on the floor as the pitch was perfect, though the gale force wind also dissuaded the employment of the big boot. On Saturday I took in Benfield’s 3-2 win over Whitley Bay; it was thrilling, but the heavy, soft pitch made certain parts of the game a lottery, where excitement was provided by uneven bounce and sticky patches. It tells me that the future of the non-league game, unless a club is blessed with a superb draining pitch like Seaham Red Star or Billingham Synthonia,or an eye-watering £27,000 to invest on impermeable pitch covering, must be 4G pitches. The FA needs to act and provide money for community facilities in each area across the country, perhaps 2 per regional FA as minimum investment, to allow clubs to develop their youth set-ups, be open 7 days a week and allow football to be played on immaculate surfaces, rather than on boggy lotteries.

Instead of pampering millionaire Premiership players, let’s cascade money downwards; my Over 40s team played a game on 4G at Burnside School the other week as our pitch at Bigges Main was unplayable. The surface was true, the result a thumping 6-1 win in the real Tyne & Wear derby over Ryhope Cricket club, but the cost was a whopping £120; such expense simply is not sustainable for most teams. The choice for us is either pay outrageous charge this or face a ludicrous fixture pile up in April and May. Let’s be clear about this; the FA need to pay for facilities to improve the grassroots game by taking it off grassy bogs. It’s not as if the game isn’t awash with money after all.