Slow Train Coming

Just over four years ago I attended North Shields against Phoenix Sports in the FA Vase, simply because Benfield were without a game that day. Shields, in front of a raucous full house, advanced to the quarter finals with a comprehensive 4-1 win. That was the last time I ever set foot in Ralph Gardiner Park, as I was summarily banned from the ground, ostensibly for selling copies of The Popular Side, the Newcastle United fanzine I used to edit, without permission. Fair enough, I was guilty of this transgression, admitted to it and wrote an apology. It cut no ice. The ban remains in force, which is a shame as I would quite like to have seen Benfield wipe the floor with Shields the last two seasons, but there you go. Last year, when The Lions triumphed 4-3, the game was switched to a Friday night and I’d already bought tickets for Pete Astor at The Cumberland, so no bones broken. This year, I decided to remove myself completely from the equation and recomplete my Northern League set by ticking off Redcar Athletic, who were hosting Brandon United.

Redcar isn’t a place I’ve visited very often. I remember going through it in May 1988, en route to a job interview about 10 miles to the south in the tiny settlement of Brotton, the smallest place ever to have boasted a Northern League side, albeit in the 1890s. At the interview, the head teacher pointed out I’d began my letter of application with a tremendous typo; Dear Sid instead of Dear Sir. It wasn’t a promising start; mind after sitting in on a year 10 lesson when pupils were giving talks about their hobbies and two lasses extolled the joys of ferreting in the Cleveland Hills, I’m glad I didn’t make the grade, delighted to escape the sticks with a lift to the genteel Victorian grandeur of Saltburn where I caught the train home.

What I remember most about that day was the feeling of utter insignificance as the 2-carriage rattler trundled through the stark, visceral enormity of Cargo Fleet; the fires, furnaces and ferocity of the rolling mills and smelters on either side of the apologetically narrow train track put one in mind of a post-apocalyptic Grand Canyon. These days, it’s a post-industrial wasteland; Redcar British Steel is the least used train station on the whole network, while the flames have been doused and then haphazardly landscaped. It is an empty place. Harrowing.

It was more than a quarter of a century before I returned, which was for Redcar Old Boys v Wallsend Winstons in the Over 40s league. Bad blood and an alleged incident of gouging had marred our home game, but the return in late 2015, played at Redcar Rugby Club which is adjacent to Redcar Athletic’s ground, saw things go off the scale. Our alleged gouging victim had just scored to bring us back to 2-1 down but celebrated by giving the supposed perpetrator of the ocular assault an incredible kicking, before being dragged away. The cops got involved and statements were given, before mental Martin’s money saw the prosecution go away. Appalling.  Terrifying.

Back to the present day. The last time I’d had an away day from Central, to Edinburgh City, Newcastle had been on their travels to Huddersfield. Today, Ashley’s Army were hosting the Terriers. Many of their fans, loud and fat, appeared to be Shannon Matthews’s extended family, judging by demeanour and deportment. I was glad to take my seat on the slightly delayed 12.52, occasioned by the difficulties involved in removing a clearly terrified autistic lad from the train. The delay did allow the birthday boy himself, Harry Pearson, to climb on board. He was having a nice day out to Esh Winning 5 Easington CW 2; a new ground for him as well. West Terrace, the most scenic of grounds, would have looked stunning in this unseasonal sunshine. It was a shame I couldn’t go with him, but there was a duty to perform.

I changed at Darlington to an almost deserted Bishop Auckland to Saltburn service. Arriving in Middlesbrough, it appeared there were more Saturday shoppers waiting to get on than people wanting to get off. What made this more astonishing was that this was a Boro home game day; QPR, not known for their travelling support, were in town. Unlike the febrile, fevered anticipation at Newcastle Central, the match day experience on Teesside is an understated affair, easily ignored. For the record, Boro won 2-0 to remain in the play-offs in front of a crowd of just over 22k.

Redcar East was my destination and I arrived on time at 13.59. Google maps told me the ground was a 12-minute walk away. Splendid stuff. Rather typically, despite having Sat Nav on my phone, I got completely lost and, on the hottest day of the year, wandered aimlessly around the place until I lucked upon the right route, but still didn’t enter the ground until 15.04. By that time, Redcar had already established a 2-0 lead. It wasn’t a surprise as Brandon are in a parlous state; once all England Sunday Cup Winners and lauded for an incredible Northern League title win as recently as 2005, they are in danger of finishing bottom of Division 2. Of course, the machinations of league restructuring mean that nobody has a clue how many will go down at the end of this year, not even the FA at this stage, but things aren’t looking good.

It looked fairly ominous from the moment I arrived; Redcar swarmed forward, hitting the bar twice in quick succession and keeping a young Brandon side who would struggle in the Tyneside Amateur, penned into their own half. It was 3-0 with a penalty on 30 minutes and 4-0 just on half time. The goals were accompanied by the sound of distant shotgun fire in the proximate Cleveland Hills; the pellets tearing through rabbit flesh as much of a massacre as events in front of me.

Half time gave me the chance for a coffee and a slice of delicious corned beef pie, as well as a wander round. The ground, which reminded me slightly of Jarrow’s Perth Green home or, because of the rural vibe, Newcastle University’s new home of Kimberley Park in Prudhoe is perfectly serviceable for Division 2 standards, with a crowd of 156 loosely rattling around the touchlines. The second half, played in marginally cooler conditions with a slight breeze coming off the sea, was more of the same. It was 6-0 by the hour and the ref started showing unconscious sympathy by denying Redcar a pair of stonewall penalties. No matter, they continued to pick off Brandon at will and advanced to 9-0 after 80 minutes, at which point the tenacious Durham lads showed the necessary teeth and determination to avoid conceding another and thus avoided the indignity of double figures. To be frank, Redcar were nothing flash; just strong, fast and direct, but Brandon were abject. Poor lads.

Full time and a much shorter walk back to Redcar East gave me time on the platform to digest the scores; a win for Newcastle and, even better, Benfield wiped the floor with Shields, easing past them with a 3-1 score line. Excellent stuff. Terrible stuff on the train mind. A points failure at South Bank delayed us by well over an hour, meaning I didn’t get back to Central until almost 8pm. Still, at least Northern Rail’s Delay Repay scheme with refund the ticket price, which will come in handy when planning my next little excursion on April 6^th.

To Err Is Human; To Forgive Divine....

There's a noticeable lack of Christian charity about the place whenever Samima Begum is discussed...

I may have mentioned this before, but my first conscious political act was on the night of the General Election on 28^th February 1974, when me and Paul “Sten” Stonehouse stood outside the Polling Station at Felling Community Centre chanting “Heath is a cunt,” which I’d still suggest was a slice of prescient analysis for a pair of 9 year olds. Just over 5 years later, on Saturday 28^th April 1979, the weekend before Thatcher won her first election, I became an active Socialist when I went on my first Tyneside May Day March. In those days, the turnout on a route that wound from Neville Street behind the station to a mass rally in Exhibition Park rivalled the number of participants for the Durham Big Meeting. The whole experience was inspirational. I’d love to say that was the day I fell in love with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and other companion parties in the World Socialist Movement, but it wasn’t. That genius move didn’t occur until I arrived at university in September 1983.

However, I met other kids around my age who earnestly hoped for non-violent social change. Consequently, I found myself in the presence of the tribunes of a putative revolutionary scion called the National Union of School Students; a front organisation for the youth wing of the Socialist Workers Party. Needless to say I joined and enjoyed a summer and autumn of youthful class struggle, made even sweeter by our entire branch’s defection from the SWP to Revolution Youth, the International Marxist Group’s Under 5s. I’m still in touch with Avram, Patricia and Peter who I met that day; semi-regularly we have catch ups that include visits to museums, art galleries or the theatre.  I still feel nostalgic for the weekly wise words contained within the covers Socialist Challenge. The cogent support for women’s rights, gay equality and the nationalist population in the Six Counties was so far removed from the crass, oily workerism of the likes of the boiler-suited boors on the tools with Militant.

I’m proud to be a Socialist and I’m more than proud my son is one also. I think his first conscious political act was to take a couple of days off school to demonstrate outside the Civic Centre about the first set of cuts that accompanied the introduction of state endorsed penury, in about 2010 or 2011, when he was a similar age to me at the end of the 70s. Needless to say, these days he’s a member of the Labour Party; almost everyone I’m related to is, even me. Probably that’s why I was so happy to see all those mass walk outs in schools across the country on Friday 15^th February, with a whole swathe of teenagers expressing their concern at the future of their planet by the supreme act of defiance enshrined in a withdrawal of their labours. Mind, the world has changed irrevocably; most adults seem to think that what starts with a half day of to wave some flags in solidarity with David Attenborough ends with the bairns in a tent in Raqqa like Samima Begum, bearing a Kalashnikov in one hand and a suckling infant in the other.

When news about Samima’s circumstances and desire to return broke, the response to it was fairly predictable; sombre, posturing rhetoric from politicians hellbent on sweeping all talk of the impending Brexit Nuclear Winter from our screens and tidal waves of incoherent, rambling bloodlust from the haram gammon authoritarian populists. Some want her hung in the street, while others call for her to be beheaded. It’s a sad state of affairs when the vicious, evil Tory government we are yoked under is to the left of a significant strand of public opinion.

We’ll return to the question of Samima’s citizenship and the role of Uncle Tom Javid later, but first I’d like to consider the case of James Gralton; the only Irishman to be barred from the Free State after Partition. Born in 1886, Gralton was a native of Effrinagh, six miles east of Carrick-on-Shannon in the county of Lovely Leitrim.  Reared on a small farm of about twenty-five acres of bad land, Jimmy migrated to the United States in 1909, but returned to Ireland to fight in the Civil War on the Republican side, though he left once more for furr Amerikay after the Treaty Forces prevailed. However, the flowing waters of the dark, mutinous Shannon had him in their thrall and, like a good lad; he came home once more in 1932 to look after his aged mother. Additionally, he had a couple of part-time jobs that reflected his interests; joining the Revolutionary Workers' Group, a predecessor of the Communist Party of Ireland, as well as running a dance hall in Effrinagh where he organised free events and expounded his political views between numbers. These were clericofascist times in Connacht and violent protests against these ideologically pure dances were led by Catholic priests, which culminated in a shooting incident. Following this, on 9^th February 1933, Jimmy was arrested, and later deported to the United States of America, on the basis that he was an alien, despite his Irish citizenship. Seemingly, the legality of such actions was not considered relevant when the state decided vengeful repression was the order of the day.

Meanwhile, in the present day, social media drips venom in the form of endless demands for the execution of Shamima Begum; a 19 year old mother and widow. To summarise, in 2015 Shamima left her home in east London with two fellow pupils from Bethnal Green Academy, both of whom subsequently died in western airstrikes. Their journey to Syria via Istanbul was funded by the sale of stolen family jewellery and inspired by ideological brainwashing by a Glaswegian woman, Aqsa Mahmood, who recruited them to what has been described as a jihadi, girl-power subculture. At the time of their departure, the girls were 15. When I attended the May Day March in 1979, I was 14 and three quarters. The British Armed Forces accept recruits who are 16. The average age of Argentinian conscripts who died in the 1982 Malvinas conflict was 17. Bairns; all of them. Bairns who because of circumstance, belief or accident, end up being trained to fire weapons, learning how to kill. It’s wrong, fundamentally wrong. All of it. At least I have always been an advocate of passive resistance, rather than bloodlust. Unlike those who took up arms, for a cause or worse, a government, I have nothing to apologise for. Shamima Begum made a mistake, but she’s no worse than thousands of other young people attracted to military life by the intoxicating sound of musket, fife and drum. And I forgive them all, because they were children.

Forgiveness, as I understand it, is a fundamental part of Christianity; indeed, absolution is a universal feature of the historic churches of Christendom. Putting the parable of the lost sheep and the principle of turning the other cheek to one side, I accept it is fairly unlikely at the minute that Shamima will apologise, with both honest contrition and full understanding, for her acts. Look at it from her point of view; she has developed a belief that Bush and Blair’s illegal war against Islam was part of a strategy that can only be seen as the New Crusades. While the principle reason for the Iraq War was oil, the messianic, fundamental Christianity of Bush and Blair was an obvious influence on their actions. As a child, Shamima would have seen footage of endless air strikes on innocent Muslims. This must have had an effect; combine that with her current location and the fact the West made her a widow before she was old enough to drive and you can understand her reluctance to condemn the cause for which she has fought.  Certainly, I’m not saying I agree with her, but I understand where she’s coming from.

Sajid Javid’s grandstanding act of stripping Shamima of British citizenship, making her effectively stateless, is not only pompous showmanship; it is also both illegal and futile. Quite properly, the European Court of Human Rights will overturn this pitiful piece of nationalistic propaganda. The Government needs to quietly retreat from this farcical position and undo the stupid response to a febrile atmosphere. Let’s get Shamima home and work with her to find out more about ISIL and her adherence to them. She can, and will, be deradicalised and able to take her place as a useful member of society. Frankly, her experiences with Daesh are probably more valuable than a teenage life spent glugging cider and smoking tabs at Howdon Metro Station.

Jimmy Gralton died in Brooklyn in December 1945, nursed through his final illness by his long-time companion Bessie Cronogue from Drumsna, also in Leitrim. It took over 70 years for Jimmy to receive absolution. After a posthumous campaign to clear his name, Michael D Higgins announced at the unveiling of memorial to Jimmy on 3^rd September 2016, at Effrinagh on the site where the hall once stood, that the only deportation of an Irishman from Ireland was "wrong and indefensible". The stone edifice tells the story of Gralton’s life as a labour campaigner and was partially funded by the trade union movement.  A cinematic memorial to Jimmy is Ken Loach’s 2014 film Jimmy’s Hall. Let’s hope it doesn’t take 70 years for Samima Begum to be exonerated, pardoned and accepted for standing up for her beliefs and convictionsecause she knew no better.

Cold Discomforts

Brexit man.... FFS.....

It’s hard to believe, but I’m four months in to my new role and delighted to say things are much better than early days suggested they could ever be. Really the only bit I’m still struggling with is the concept of the shift system. We get a rota weeks in advance, so you know whether you’ll be on earlies (8.00-4.30), mids (10.00-6.30) or lates (2.00-10.30) in which particular week. Obviously, with the midweek cricket fixtures already out and the new season peaking over the hill on the far side of Easter, it’s going to take some judicious planning, not to mention a large chunk of my annual holidays, to ensure I keep up my appearances. Knowledge is power, of course, so I’m applying logic to my predicted work rota. For me, it seems as if I’m on an endless repeat cycle of two weeks of earlies and two weeks of lates, so at least there’s a degree of continuity, even if  that Monday morning early shift when you’ve just finished a fortnight of lates the previous Friday, hurts like hell.

As a rule of thumb, earlies are steady and quite solemn in tone. Mids are universally despised, while lates are undoubtedly more fun; you’re busy, but the whole place is almost relaxed. The main problem with lates is that you can’t do anything once you’ve clocked off; going to gigs, playing or watching football and having a pint, other than on Friday nights when most boozers are open late, are all non-starters. Also, if you’re a night owl like me, you’ll probably stay up until yon time, farting about on the computer, reading or scrolling through shite on the telly, and then lie on until noon, so you don’t get much done before you begin your shift either. With that in mind, I decided to get creative with my gym attendance. If I’m on earlies, it’s 7.30pm on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, allowing me to play 6 a side on Monday and Wednesday. If I’m on lates, it’s 7.30am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, followed by a swift return home and a couple of hours supplementary sleep before the toad squats on my life again.

It’s a 6.15 start on gym days. Up and out the door, only time to brush my teeth and throw some clothes on before tramping down to the Metro. Tynemouth to Byker isn’t the busiest of routes that time in the morning, though the station shop is open and I drop in for a bottle of water. Recently I’ve noticed a youngish bloke, slumped against the ticket machines, huddled in a frayed sleeping bag, almost swaddled by an inadequate blanket. There’s always a friendly good morning and an attempt at a smile from him; no pressure to donate. Estate agents boost prices whenever they talk about the value of coastal living; here we’re seeing the sad reality of coastal existing.  I don’t know the lad’s back story, but he’s dossing midway between North Shields and Whitley Bay, where there are phenomenal numbers of vulnerably housed young people in temporary hostel and B&B accommodation, formerly owned by North Tyneside Council. If he can’t get a bed in one of those pillar box red doored semi sanctuaries, then he’s really at the lowest ebb.

The first Friday of February was the coldest day of 2019; snow had fallen and frozen overnight. Not yet 6.45 a.m. and the young bloke is in position, cheery as ever. I haven’t given him anything in the past, as my Metro charity is generally dedicated to slipping Johnny Decker a fiver whenever I come across the poor old bugger, but this morning I have to. I get him a hot chocolate from the vending machine in the newsagent’s, reasoning that the cocoa powder and sugar will at least give him some sustenance, before dropping a £2 coin into his hand. It’s the only change I have on me, but I’ll regret I didn’t give him the £20 note that stayed snug in my wallet as soon as I get on the train. Normally, there are about half a dozen punters on the whole of the train at this time of the morning, which swells to around 30 by the time I get off at Byker. Today there’s already that many aboard when the doors open.

I can’t quite believe the scene I’m greeted with; seemingly fast asleep on the 3 person bench seats in the middle of each carriage are several teenage lads, uniformly attired in black Northface or equivalents, hoodies, trackie bottoms and scuffed trainers. The young homeless, frozen half to death during the night, they ride the Metro from South Shields to St James or the airport to South Hylton in the petrified semi-darkness before the modest version of a rush hour that Tyneside boasts, as keeping warm means keeping alive. Killing time until their daily dose of methadone is dispensed, getting their heads down in the warmth of a commuter train, while keeping an eye out for the Checkies; Metro’s Mobile Revenue Compliance Inspectors. Evil fucktards that they are.

If you want further evidence of how compassion has died, and the world we once knew has died with it, visit the Metro website which, without irony, boasts how Nexus is “primarily focused on the safety of our passengers.” To illustrate this, there is a large photo, prominently displayed, of space hopper sized Checkies, squeezed into regulation turquoise nylon fleeces, notepads at the ready, backed up by the institutional muscle of a smattering of coppers in Kevlar vests, poised to “stamp out anti-social behaviour, including fare dodging.” To back this up, Checkies are now being fitted with bodycams for the purpose of collecting evidence, as there has been an increase in verbal and physical attacks on them of late. My heart coagulates.

Seriously, how do these people sleep at night? Presumably not on the concrete floors of station forecourts, counting the seconds until the start of service and the stolen chance of some warmth on the move. What has happened to our society whereby it is seen as a sweet and glorious thing for the state and their soft, fat flunkies to persecute the weak, the desperate and the marginalised? Without a roof over their heads, the poor bastards who dodge their fares because they don’t have the money to feed themselves or their habit are on the end of a system wide “crackdown” on their “illegal activities.” Not in my name they are not.

This immoral and unnecessary ramping up of intolerance, contempt and hatred for the homeless, in the same way that refugees, Muslims and sundry other non-WASP sectors of society, not to mention petit bourgeois leftist intellectuals such as myself, have become hate figures among authoritarian populists, or how trans women are persecuted and demonised by TERFs, by the insidious tactics of the mainstream media and their functionaries such as the despicable Yaxley-Lennon et al, is part of the terrible shadow cast across our society by the spectre of Brexit.

If you ask me for a solution to the current paralysis afflicting society, then I’d recommend the immediate cancellation of Article 50 and a firm declaration that Britain will remain a part of Europe forever. In addition I’d suggest the immediate independence for Scotland and the reunification of Ireland as a 32 county republic. I have held those beliefs have dear for a considerable length of time, predating the June 2016 act of collective insanity that was Brexit, by decades. Sadly, I realise that we’ve a while to go before these things come to pass. However, I am prepared to predict what will happen on or before 23.00 on 23 March, namely Britain will not leave the European Union then or at any point in the future without a comprehensive agreement. Despite “the will of the people” or whatever you want to call it, No Deal will not be allowed to happen by the ruling classes and here’s why; the EU and the City of London will call the final shots, not gin-sodden dodderers in the Home Counties or sieg heiling, Carling addicted, unemployed car workers from Grindon and Plains Farm.

The whole idea of Project Fear amuses me, because the reality simply does not stack up when compared with the implied breakdown of society we apparently have in store. If you’ve ever had cause to contact the cops, even in an emergency, over the past few years, you’ll know there simply aren’t enough flatties to go around. They can’t cope with the day to day chew of break-ins, car thefts and radgey pissheads windmilling each other in Weatherspoon’s, never mind trying to maintain order in dystopian Derby, riotous Reading and post-apocalyptic Peterborough while the gutters run with blood and tears this summer; possibly sweat too, if we get a heatwave like last year.

Even more hilarious is the none too subtle hint that troops will be utilised to impose Martial Law if the balloon goes up. Come on; the Provos gave these brave lads the run around for half a century in the Six Counties and it took this allegedly finely honed fighting machine 4 months to lay a glove on a rabble of half starved Argentinian schoolboy conscripts in the Malvinas. That was when there were 200,000 more Bill Oddies than there are now remember.

Stories of imminent food shortages, missing medication and other nightmarish visions of a country in collapse are merely works of speculative fiction with an ideological edge. The whole purpose of such scaremongering is to frighten the populace into accepting one of the two deals that will come to pass. Either May’s current crap proposals will get minimal tweaking and Royal Assent or, the slightly less terrible option comes to pass, she quits and whichever chinless bastard is left holding the keys to Number 10 when the music stops, manages to halt Article 50 for an unspecified length of time, which will be long enough to organise a Norway Plus type deal. This being the case, another referendum offering the choice between this deal and Remain will be on the agenda. A General Election seems unlikely at this point, as the full Tory Party fissure that would undoubtedly coincide with such an eventuality is to be avoided at any cost, in order to best serve the whims, caprices and selfish desires of venal, rapacious capitalist bastards.

And what of the Labour Party? I’ve no brief for the likes of Chuks Umunna or Tom Watson, but that doesn’t mean to say I’m flag waving for Corbyn either. As ever, he’s shown himself to be a deeply principled politician, but a fucking terrible leader. Without question, the disinclination to go any further down the road of Remain than demanding No Deal “option” disappears, has been a tactical disaster. Of course the fact Corbyn went on record the day after the referendum saying Article 50 should be triggered immediately probably has a lot to do with his reluctance to inquire, much less agitate for, about a suspension of Article 50 and a People’s Vote, as does his lifelong opposition to the Common Market or whatever you want to call the current and all previous iterations of the vision encapsulated in the Treaty of Rome.   

If we leave the EU, the future will be unspeakably bleak as any deal is bound to be worse than our current arrangements. Indeed, even if we stay, there is a cost to be counted, as we will still be saddled with an enormous bill for all the farcical events since June 2016. The only possible good that will come from the whole sordid affair will be a public acknowledgement that an intensely complex logical problem cannot be solved by a woefully inadequate binary question. Most importantly, whatever the outcome, those poor young lads looking for warmth on the Metro, especially the shivering bloke at Tynemouth station, are not having their needs addressed by our society and that is the biggest outrage of all.

An Epistle to the Alopecians

It's about time I wrote something concerning Newcastle United....

February 2^nd, 2019 was the first Saturday I’d not been able to attend a live football or cricket fixture since last March, incredibly enough. On that occasion, the Beast from the East shut down the whole of society to the extent that I could only make it as far as The Lodge and back. This time, a couple of days of snow showers and plunging temperatures wiped out all fixtures, including those on 4G, such as my beloved Benfield’s putative trip to Consett. In the absence of a need to be anywhere in particular, I found myself in The Lodge having my first pint of the week at 11.48 AM; delicious it was too. I only had the one, before taking in Spurs v Newcastle at my equally beloved Tynemouth Cricket Club, with the accompaniment of another couple of pints and then a beer round at Captain Sturrock’s new gaffe, before another in The Oddfellows, an undrinkable one in the Pub and Kitchen and several more in the fabulous new micropub on Bedford Street, the Enigma Tap. Things were decidedly messy by this point and a taxi home, followed by a very early night were the order of the day. Still, at least it allowed me to be up bright and early on Sunday morning to see Match of the Day.

The highlights confirmed what had been my instinct during the game; Spurs had been the better side, but Newcastle had given a decent account of themselves and, despite trailing considerably in terms of efforts on goal, had been more than a shade unlucky to lose. Without question, the two best players on display were Son for Spurs and Dubravka for the Magpies; the latter had been utterly dominant the whole game, showing superb aerial athleticism to catch each and every high ball into the box. Sure, he could have done better with the winner, but if you see it in real time and not unreliable slow motion, you can see what power the Korean put into his dipping effort. I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit with the prevalent NUFC supporter culture of blame, blame and blame again, but I’m not pointing my finger at Dubravka as he is the best keeper Newcastle have had since Shay Given was injured in 2006.

All in all, despite the fact Newcastle sit only 2 points above a relegation spot, the Spurs performance was a decent and almost encouraging one. Frankly, while it seems a reasonable assumption that Wolves will beat Newcastle next time out, the facts are that if NUFC can maintain their more than adequate, hitherto unbeaten record against other sides in the bottom 7, relegation won’t be an issue on Tyneside, which is just how it should be and all of us from TCC can continue to exult in the fact that our very own Sean Longstaff is showing the world, particularly the posturing, bitter naysayer Anthony Giles, just what a good player he is.

You know what? That’s the first half thousand words I’ve written entirely about Newcastle United since mid-October and so I’d best continue in this vein, as a lot of things have happened since Ashley provided Benitez with a hot lunch and accompanying warm beer at Rialto’s in Ponteland 16 weeks ago. Certainly, that bonding evening seemed to work wonders when the first game back after the early autumn international break saw Brighton stroll to a 1-0 win at SJP, as the home side contrived to fail to get one of their 20 efforts on target. Strange as it may seem, the week after’s goalless bore draw at St Mary’s was actually a harbinger of better times to come. Out of absolutely nowhere, back to back home wins over Watford and Bournemouth, the latter achieved almost with a soupcon of swagger, propelled the team out of the relegation zone and curtailed any appetite for protest and confrontation against the Ashley regime among the overwhelming, silent majority of the support.

Faced with a tough choice, in the face of a bit of form on the pitch and the self-serving tactics of the relaunched print version of True Faith, the first difficult decision the Magpie Group made saw them crumble in the face of scrutiny. The much-trumpeted Shirebrook Protest went from taking bookings for a fleet of coaches heading for Sports Direct HQ in the biggest protest in Nottinghamshire since the 84 Strike, to a botched, late cancellation of the whole event on social media that left a car load of angry Mags high and dry. The Geordie Gang of Four had been holed beneath the waterline by Wallace Wilson’s timid toadies and the media baron Hirst, who appears to be ideologically closer to Randolph than Patti. From that point on, regardless of performances on or off the field, the supposedly keynote Wolves protest was doomed to be a disaster, especially as the Magpie Group’s main activity now seemed to be blocking anyone on Twitter who disagreed with them, rather than facilitating a mass protest.

Before then, there was the remarkably composed win at Burnley to savour, although I didn’t get to see it, as the new-found pleasures of work meant I was asleep by 9.00 that night. Just as things seemed to have turned a corner, the 3-0 clattering at home to West Ham brought uncomfortable reality back into play. This was the day of the farcical 11-minute walk-in protest, called to celebrate Ashley’s time in charge. Quite fabulously, it coincided with West Ham taking the lead, so the thousand or so amateur malcontents who’d been enjoying an extra £4.50 bottle of Coors in the back of the Gallowgate took their pews just in time to see Newcastle kicking off a goal down and to leap on the end of the wrath of 45,000 others who were more concerned with the fate of their team on the pitch than collecting new Twitter followers. After such a kick in the bollocks, the last thing Newcastle needed was a midweek trip to pantomime villains Everton, but the team again confounded expectations with a thoroughly merited point, raising the stakes again leading up to the Wolves game.

Personally, I had hoped to celebrate Sean’s new contract by cheering him on against Macclesfield in the Checkatrade Trophy game on the Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was stuck at work on a late shift and so I was prevented from joining the 1,126 zealots who’d braved the cold to welcome former NUFC legend Sol Campbell in his first managerial appointment. To put that crowd in context, it was more than 3 times the amount of those who walked in late against West Ham, but fair play to the Magpie Group for organising 50k empty seats for this one. Yes, I’m being ironic. Meanwhile, with Harry Redknapp stuck in the jungle, it appeared that Sulzeer was ideally positioned to replace Parditez in the SJP hot seat. Yes, I’m still being ironic.

With the chance to attend SJP and not see a Parditez team in action being denied me, it meant I was more concerned that week with the impending trial of Paul Gascoigne for sexual assault on a train. The thing that initially surprised me the most was that it was a woman who had been the victim of the has-been, alcoholic’s unwelcome intrusions. You see I have long felt that the root cause of all of Gascoigne’s problems has been self-loathing caused by his utter hatred of his identity; toxic masculinity has poisoned Gascoigne’s mind. He will only feel a sense of peace when he accepts who he really is and embraces his sexuality and possibly his gender orientation. If he doesn’t, endless misery remains in store until he finally dies an unhappy death, quite possibly before the case comes to court in October 2019.

Meanwhile, in the face of claim and counter claim, the Magpie Group endured another self-inflicted body blow by bowing down to the caprices of the printed True Faith fanzine, who demanded the cancellation of the Wolves boycott, presumably as it would reduce the number of sales of their publication on a match day. Of course, they didn’t say this was the reason they wanted the boycott cancelled; instead they came up with the scarcely believable canard that any protest might frighten off potential takeover consortia, as the implied buyers presumably wanted a stable, compliant fanbase as part of the package. The fact the only name who was mentioned as a part of the shady backstage operators and number crunchers supposedly manoeuvring into position, was Peter Kenyon, made the idea of a change of ownership about as believable as the existence of unicorns. Typically, this didn’t appear to cross the minds of the vacuous fools who took the narrative of a potential sale as gospel. As an aside, would any serious bidder wanting to mount a takeover of Newcastle United be happy to stick with a manager who had lost 8 home games before FA Cup third round day?

It had long been my intention to boycott the Wolves boycott, even with Parditez still in nominal charge, but the question of whether to attend or not was made superfluous by the scheduling of the finals of the Northumberland Indoor Cricket 6-a-side finals at South North, where my beloved Tynemouth retained the title. In between games, we got to see the second half of the Wolves game in the closed and chilly clubhouse. I’d never previously associated Wolves with attacking, fluent football, but they are great to watch, especially on the break. By contrast, from what I saw, Newcastle didn’t have a shot on goal. In mitigation, Yedlin’s dismissal made things tough, and in the final analysis, Mike Riley’s woeful refereeing was the difference between the two teams. NUFC should have had a penalty, but Wolves were the better team without question. The moral high ground is still a lousy place to watch the theft of a point in the final seconds mind. Even worse was Parditez’s toe-curlingly embarrassing post-match press conference. Alright, he did have a point about the unpunished foul on Perez, but to mention VAR a dozen times in reply to the soft questions served up by doe-eyed and docile local journos was pathetic and parodic, though it did have the desired effect of deflecting any criticism of a boss who had just endured his 7^th home loss out of 9 games. Such a record isn’t just bad luck, but rank bad management by Ashley, Charnley and Parditez. Still, always nice to see a sold-out SJP; this is the reason why nothing will ever change at Newcastle United.

The following Saturday, I took advantage of a free weekend for my beloved Benfield to head up to Edinburgh City against Elgin City. On the way, the Metro and Central Station were thronged with Ashley’s Army en route to Huddersfield; many of them showing obvious signs of apprehension but, what do you know, they dug in and dug out a stellar performance that had me punching the air on the bus back to Waverley when the final score came through. My joy was nowt compared to the battered and jubilant hordes detraining at Central when I got back. It was truly the best of times, but why couldn’t the team and in particular the manager kick on and win a home game convincingly? On the Saturday before Christmas, a limp and lousy Fulham side rocked up with a single away point to their name and left after 90 stultifying minutes cursing their lack of composure in front of goal, having spurned 3 clear cut opportunities in injury time. Newcastle, meanwhile, had 2 shots on target all game. Another Parditez press conference car crash ensued, when he tried to accentuate the positive of a clean sheet and blamed the crowd for the team not playing with any fluency. The collective insanity of the back five, not four mark you, may be beyond comprehension, but finally most fans are waking up to the disturbing reality of such negative tactics.

Even more disturbing were the actions of the weird and shady London Mags, who have emerged as a kind of exiled Manson Family style faction of the Magpie Group. In some parallel universe, they reasoned it was normal, acceptable behaviour to creepy crawl Mike Ashley’s house, posting close up photos on social media of the tasteless, pretend Palladian pile in leafy Whetstone, as well as his local, the Orange Tree, taken on a chilly Wednesday night in mid-December. I’m at a loss what such behaviour is supposed to achieve, other than cease and desist letters from Ashley’s legal team, or a visit from the Plod that could end up with these jokers up in court on harassment charges. 

Mind, any sense of Festive jollity and goodwill to all men was wrecked by Parditez’s Christmas Eve press conference that could have stirred Jacob Marley from his grave. With predictable negativity and astonishing unprofessionalism, he announced it would be a “miracle” if Newcastle stayed up. Apart from wondering just how the team would respond to such public trash talking, and don’t try and patronise me by saying it was actually very clever mind games, what does it say about the manager’s ability if he doesn’t think he can achieve a finish 7 places lower than the season before? Such victim blaming was lost among the debris of the Liverpool thumping on Boxing Day, whereby the contrary selection of the worst XI available by Carfa Parditez was partly masked by outrage at Salah’s vile theatrics. That said, another shameful capitulation and dreadful press conference of disingenuous Pilate style handwashing, was a disgrace. Being honest, it was a surprise to see the team thumped on the road, as normally the away performances aren’t quite as bad as the home ones. Perhaps there’s an argument for two different managers; one at SJP who wants to win games and then Parditez away, who sets them up for grim and dogged defence of the point available for a goalless draw.

In the run up to the Watford away game, former True Faith impresario Michael Martin, who’d been in the long grass since the fallout caused by the Wolves boycott fiasco, poked his scalp above the parapet to release tantalising quasi ITK info related to the supposed imminent sale of Newcastle United. Despite hinting at what George Caulkin had told him in confidence, the whole thing was a hill of beans and a tissue of horseshit; nothing happened at all and we’re still enduring the mismanagement of Ashley and Charnley, topped off by the eye-bleedingly awful football and even worse press conferences served up by El Estafador. That said, I did sympathise with some of the criticism dished out by those buffoons on Radio Newcastle as we headed home from my beloved Benfield’s great win at Guisborough Town. It seemed as if everyone texting in was suffering with un Bocado de Mierda, brainlessly blaming Parditez for the concession of 2 points at Watford because the team hadn’t “gone for it” at 1-0 up. You know, I sometimes wonder if those expressing opinions can manage to walk and chew gum at the same time. However, such criticism does show just how much the manager has lost the fans; from uniform unblinking devotion to only about half the support still trusting in him, reflecting the fact you can’t fool all the people all the time.

 And so, to 2019, which was ushered in by a wholly predictable home loss to Man Utd where Dubravka’s first error of the season meant there was no way back from that point onwards. This happened at just the wrong time, with other sides running into form and some desperately tough fixtures ahead. With the club seemingly bereft of direction, leadership or plans at the start of another transfer window, prospects looked very bleak indeed. The ownership displaying stubborn stupidly and the manager afflicted by stubborn vanity. Rather than asking the manager to step aside if he couldn’t be bothered to work with the budget he’d been given, NUFC’s legions of self-appointed superfans came up with a new ruse. They wrote an open letter to Ashley, begging him to sell the club, suffused with that piteous, needy tone of attempted emotional blackmail redolent of fat teenage lasses sending a love note to their favourite boy band member. While Wallace Wilson’s discredited Magpie Group were back on message with the True Faith hierarchy, I was more than elated to see my pals in NUFC Fans United, who continue to do incredible work by masterminding the operational logistics of the NUFC Food Bank, had distanced themselves from this farcical charade. Amazingly, the Gallowgate Brosettes got a reply of sorts; Peter Kenyon’s epistle to the alopecians was suffused with  bread and circuses by way of smoke and mirrors, showing there was no chance of a takeover happening. Like Amanda Staveley, he didn’t have the money to back up his intentions, but at least he’d tried; not that’s much consolation when Ashley continues to siphon off every penny of profit to service his pockets and business deals. Sofa, so bad. 

 In the circumstances, all you could do was laugh at the fact 37k mugs turned up to watch the Blackburn FA Cup tie. As it didn’t kick off until 17.30, in many ways this was the closest to a cup run the club had been on in years. The only bright spots in another hopeless game were Sean’s home debut and Matt Ritchie showing he cares. Quite how Kenedy and Jacob Murphy can be regard as professional sportsman on this and several other showings, is a complete mystery to me; two charlatans who manage to make Atsu a semi-permanent member of the weekly starting XI. Next up was to the trip to the dark side for the Checkatrade game, with pre-match rumours that this one was a chance to emulate the Potteries derby in the previous round, whereby the away fans smashed the ground up and the black and white side cruised to a glorious victory. Fair play to the Paraffins though; they came out on top both on the pitch with a 4-0 win and off it with a 15k crowd that was bizarrely seen as a reason to take the piss out of them, despite the paltry 1,216 turn out at SJP for the Macclesfield tie. Sunderland might not have had it all their own way on the pitch this season, but they’re a game from Wembley in the Checkatrade and well placed in the league. Let’s hope we don’t have the ignominious spectacle of a Tyne Wear derby in the league to fret about next season.  

Next up there was a trip to Stamford Bridge, where only losing 2-1 to Chelsea was a decent enough result in the circumstances. The team tried their best, but simply weren’t good enough. This result seemed barely to register with most Newcastle fans, while the 4-2 extra time win in the replay at Blackburn seemed to be viewed as a disaster by many. Having been present for the titanic displays of NUFC away support in the 1995 and 1999 replay successes, not to mention the immense win in 2000, Ewood Park has long held a special place in my affections, especially on cold January nights. Obviously, I wasn’t at this one, but it seemed a truly special win and not cause to moan. I suppose the whingers were right though, as the Watford defeat in round 4 went down as the worst of all losses on home soil this season, which is really saying something. The cup exit, coming on the back of funereal press conferences by Parditez and the inability to sign a single player, with Lukaku’s left-back brother from Lazio failing a medical and rumours, thankfully soon discounted, of the odious Dennis Wise returning to an official role on Barrack Road, seemed to hint at new depths being plumbed.

Of course, this isn’t the chronological narrative. There was the thumping home win over Cardiff City, following on from the disintegration of Rafa May’s Brexit masterplan, that completed a few terrible days for Colin Wanker. If the ease of that win was a more than pleasant surprise, the unbelievable victory over a strangely subdued Manchester City was simply incredible. Not only that, the club signed a couple of players, breaking the transfer record with the arrival of Miguel Almiron and loanee Antonio Barreca making it off the bench for a late debut at Spurs, and got rid of dross like Aarons, Lazaar and Murphy on loan to the Championship, where they’ll sink without trace if graft and guile are required, which brings us pretty much up to date with the recent twists and turns involving Newcastle United.

The big question, as ever, is just where do events leave the club? As ever, the NUFC story is full of single, hesitant steps sideways and clumsy tumbles backwards, leaving the club gasping for air in the bottom rungs of lower mid-table limbo, with a manager who is more concerned with his own employability prospects once his contract is up, ostentatiously counting down the days until his merciful release in the summer, rather than rolling his sleeves up to ensure relegation is avoided. The owner remains a cussed, contrary absentee oligarch, apparently more concerned with accumulating a portfolio failed retail outlets than doing anything tangible with Newcastle United. The support has fractured again; True Faith fatally undermined and then emasculated the Magpie Group, with woeful Wallace Wilson unable to show either leadership or any sense of pragmatism, while the overwhelming majority continue to accept every indignity thrown at them with minimal complaint. Being honest, I can’t see anything other than retreads and remixes of the current paralysed impasse for years to come.

Lennonism

I said I wasn't going to write about Neil Lennon, or James McClean, but sometimes you have to do as your conscience dictates -:

Derry. 30^th January 1972. Bloody Sunday. British paratroopers summarily execute 14 completely unarmed, wholly innocent members of the Nationalist community taking part in a peaceful march for Civil Rights. This was long before the idea of a Backstop, before parity of esteem, respect for divergent traditions or any other of the glib clichés supposed to denote the winds of change that the Good Friday Agreement brought about in the Six Counties, had been thought of.  It was a time when the British Government used their occupying army to openly collude with Loyalist paramilitaries and the RUC in replicating apartheid era South African norms of repression and state terror to subjugate the entire Nationalist population; not just those seeking self-determination outside the scope of Westminster rule.

Just to bring things up to date; 47 years later not a single person responsible for slaughter on Bloody Sunday has been called to account for their actions, from the military top brass who planned the attack to the squaddies who committed the murders to the politicians who covered the whole thing up. Meanwhile, Stoke City footballer James McClean, a proud son of the Bogside, suffers unending abuse each October and November, both on line and in real life, for practising free speech and refusing to dance to the dog whistle flute band jig of British militarist populism by not wearing a poppy. McLean’s latest Instagram posts, among family snaps of his wife and kids who’ve received innumerable death threats because of his stance on poppies, include a tribute to those whose blood was spilled, and lives ended on that fateful day almost half a century ago.

I didn’t want to write about James McClean or Neil Lennon or, by reputation and inference, Martin O’Neill or indeed any footballer from the nationalist community in the north of Ireland who have become cyber and terracing hate figures in British, and especially Scottish, society for the supposed crimes of being Republican sympathisers. However, in the febrile atmosphere whereby any passionate, articulate and high-profile Catholic from the Six Counties is assumed to be a supporter of the Provos, despite the fact that the Army Council of the IRA announced a permanent cessation of all activities on 28^th July 2005, I simply must comment on events pertaining to the initial suspension and subsequnt departure of Neil Lennon from the role of Hibernian manager.

Being honest, I have no idea what James McClean’s voice sounds like, as I’ve never heard him speak. In a coincidental parody of the Section 31 gagging order on Sinn Fein members in the Republic, McClean is never heard on British television. I don’t know for certain, but I’d imagine this is his choice and fair play to him for refusing to set himself up as a soft target for media manipulation and the resultant unending abuse he would endure, whatever the subject he was commenting on. In contrast, Martin O’Neill, his voice tending to the falsetto when agitated, and the controlled almost monotone that signifies Neil Lennon’s strident, unbowed tones are as alive in my head as if the two of them were sat next to me.

Now, for many reasons I ought to dislike Martin O’Neill, specifically his lifelong support for Sunderland, the club who sacked him after barely a year in charge, and his dire final year in charge of the Irish national team following the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, but I like the bloke. Not just for his cussed and disputatious nature, but because he was a stylish and artistic player back in the day, as well as a particularly effective manager at Leicester City and Celtic, as well as a decent one with Aston Villa. Before the miracle of 2015/2016, O’Neill’s stewardship of the Foxes, whereby he took them to 3 League Cup finals and won 2 of them, was seen as a high-water mark. Moving on to Celtic in 2000, after the fiasco of the John Barnes managerial debacle, O’Neill restored the Parkhead club’s habitual dominance over the original Glasgow Rangers club that eventually folded in 2011, laying down a marker with a 6-2 win in his debut Old Firm game and subsequently recording 7 successive wins in future fixtures. The fact O’Neill left in 2005 to spend time with his wife, who had been diagnosed with cancer at that time, shows the quality and principles of the man. You may not like him, but you must respect him. While it may be true that his tactics at Sunderland and with Ireland showed him to be something of a dinosaur in the modern game, his latest, and probably final, posting at Nottingham Forest, with the cheerful, happy-go-lucky, natural comedian Roy Keane again at his side, will be less subject to public scrutiny and obloquy, allowing him to specialise in uncomplicated, percentage football that will prove effective in the second tier.

One of the repeated criticisms of O’Neill is that he is a long-ball merchant. The fact is though; you do not reach the final of a major European competition and lose in heart-breaking circumstances, simply because you launch the ball long downfield as often as possible. You get there because of astute planning and by assembling a good team and one player who was central to everything O’Neill achieved at both Leicester and Celtic was Neil Lennon. Bought from Crewe Alexandra for £750,000, Lennon immediately took his place in the Foxes side that went up via the play-offs in 1996, becoming a mainstay in the team and appearing in all 3 League Cup finals. However, perhaps his most notorious appearance was in a more passive role in April 1998, when Alan Shearer deliberately kicked Lennon in the head in the closing stages of a dire 0-0 draw at Filbert Street.

While the referee deemed the incident as not worthy of punishment at the time, the FA had no choice but to charge Shearer with violent conduct on the basis of video footage that showed the barbarity of the attack. At the FA hearing, Shearer’s legal team stated that if he were to be punished for the assault, which would mean he would have been suspended for Newcastle’s FA Cup final appearance against Arsenal, he would make himself unavailable for that summer’s World Cup in France. A hasty conflab between the blue blazers resulted in Shearer being let off scot free to the incredulity of the entire football world. I lost a lot of respect for Shearer after that incident but, paradoxically, gained a whole lot more for Neil Lennon who, as is often conveniently forgotten, spoke eloquently as a defence witness that day, insisting any contact had been purely accidental. This did not seem to register with the wider football public.

It seemed from the day of that challenge onwards, it was open season on Neil Lennon; despite being partnered in midfield by the loathsome Robbie Savage, all criticism was focused on the man from Lurgan. It was no surprise when he jumped ship to join his mentor O’Neill at Parkhead at the first opportunity. In 7 years as a player with Celtic Lennon, like Scott Brown in recent times, combined being the idol of the Tic fans and a folk devil for the opposition; his ability to control a game, combined with a ruthless streak of ambition that mirrored Roy Keane’s, as well as an unrepentant persona, saw him on the end of innumerable death threats from Loyalists, both armchair and actual. Like O’Neill, Lennon received bullets through the post and endured physical assaults when going about his daily business. Worse though, despite playing for Northern Ireland during an era of relative peace, Lennon was subjected to vicious sectarian abuse from his own fans while captaining the side, unlike O’Neill’s remarkably hassle-free appearances in the dark days of the 70s and 80s.

Lennon stepped down from the Northern Ireland team in 2002 to concentrate on playing for Celtic, which he did with distinction until 2007. His last game saw the Hoops win the Scottish Cup against Dunfermline Athletic and he left on good terms to play briefly for Nottingham Forest and then Wycombe Wanderers, two clubs very close to Martin O’Neill’s heart in point of fact, before returning to Celtic, first as Reserve Coach in 2008 and then as manager, following Tony Mowbray’s departure in 2010. While his appointment was seen by many as a natural succession, it was a high-risk appointment, bearing in mind Lennon’s passionate nature. Overall, his 4 years in charge were a great success; he won 3 successive titles and the Scottish Cup on 2 occasions. However, following a frank admission of his struggles with depression on account of the pressure cooker environment in which he worked, Lennon departed Celtic in summer 2014. 

Mind, having walked into the train wreck that was Bolton Wanderers in late 2014, trying to juggle £80m debt, the threat of administration and a transfer embargo, he may have pined for the sectarian brickbats that flew his way at Ibrox and Tynecastle and, on being appointed Hibs manager in summer 2016 in succession to Alan Stubbs, he was soon to renew his acquaintance with the vile abuse that Rangers and Hearts fans get away with as a matter of course. During his tenure of the Easter Road hot seat, Lennon was attacked by Morton players, assaulted by opposition fans at Tynecastle and subjected to a barrage of coins at Ibrox, with the official narrative stating that Lennon brought it all on himself by being a mouthy Taig who didn’t know his place.

Without question, Hibernian are one of the world’s greatest clubs and Easter Road is a palace of football. That said, there have been some desperate times on the pitch in Leith in recent years, as the cycle of boom and bust is endlessly repeated. After the glorious football during the Tony Mowbray era and the superb 5-1 League Cup final win over Kilmarnock in 2007 under John Collins, who left the club, having been frustrated by a lack of ambition and funds from the boardroom, things got ugly for a while. Mixu Paatelainen achieved little, John Hughes was only a marginal improvement, Colin Calderwood was predictably dreadful, Pat Fenlon was out of his depth, despite 2 cup final appearances and Terry Butcher, who took Hibs down in 2014, was the worst of the lot. The unheralded appointment of Alan Stubbs was a stroke of genius; who would have thought that the cumbersome centre back would be such a devotee of total football? In the toughest ever Scottish Championship, Hibs came up short in 2015 and maddeningly lost again in the play offs the year after. When Ross County, totally against the run of play, defeated Hibs in the 2016 League Cup final, it seemed as if the traditional Hibs way of gallant underachievement was the only way the club would go. And then, the magical moment when David Gray’s unstoppable header tore into the roof of Wes Foderingham’s net, released 114 years of pent-up passion as the Scottish Cup came back to Leith for the first time since 1902.

In the delirious aftermath of this incredible triumph, Stubbs left, and Lennon came in. It would be fair to say the Lurgan native is not a romantic. He rolled up his sleeves, assembled a strong side and strolled to the Scottish Championship. Back in the top flight, Hibs played sparkling football in 2017/2018, summed up by an incredible 5-5 draw on the last day of the season against Rangers, which saw The Cabbage finishing a deserved and encouraging third. Not bad for first season back, but still not enough to make Dempster, Farmer or Petrie release the purse strings. Lennon, as ever the target for sectarian abuse from the terraces and institutionally racist harassment from the SFA, cut an increasingly frustrated figure as the Hibees stuttered along in lower mid table this season. In many ways, the surprising thing about Lennon’s suspension on 25^th January and departure 5 days later, was that it took so long to happen. It seems remarkable, considering the strictures he worked under and the abuse he endured, that he hadn’t quit the club before as, rather like Rafa Benitez, his palpable anger and disappointment with the owners appears to have made his position untenable.

I sincerely hope Lennon returns to his role with Hibs, if at all possible. If not, I hope he replaces Benitez at Newcastle as I’m sure his brand of football will be the perfect antidote to the sterility of the Spaniard’s tenure. If there is no chance of a brokered peace between Lennon and the Hibs hierarchy, then the club have an enormous task to replace him; obvious names such as lifelong Hibby Gordon Strachan or the unemployed Alan Stubbs come to mind, but if the board try to do it on the cheap, as so many times before, by appointing some has-been or never was, then the unavoidable thought that the wheel of fortune has revolved towards another period of mediocrity at Easter Road, becomes a compelling one.

Most importantly though, if Lennon is driven out of Scotland, for whatever reason, it will provide the brainless Billy Boys with another reason to think their unacceptable attitudes and crass, illegal behaviour is acceptable. That must not be allowed to happen.  

Socially Inept

Andy Warhol’s late 60s assertion that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes was undoubtedly a glib, throwaway remark, born of the slogan-heavy counter cultural zeitgeist. However, half a century later, if one adds the prefix in to famous, bearing in mind that the concentration span of your average armchair, social media addicted Sky and BT football sponge is around the time it takes to boil a clutch of hen’s eggs, then the albino Slovak charlatan’s words start to ring true.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a bairn, trolls were mythical creatures that hung around under bridges, frightening goats. They certainly weren’t socially inadequate, mindless morons whose sole source of human interaction was via a repeated series of vicious and deliberately hurtful comments on the Internet, aimed at people they didn’t even know on a personal basis, purely for some kind of perverse gratification that psychiatrists would be better analysing than I. Alright, so part of that was as a result of the Internet not having been invented, but you get my point. In the halcyon days of my youth, bullies persecuted you to your face, not behind your back. You knew who they were, what they were about and, generally, how to minimise or end the, predominantly physical, persecution they were able to inflict. Unfortunately, technology has taken that immediacy of interaction out of the equation.

Of course, there were still a few faceless bullies back in the day; the papers would regularly tell tales of “poison pen” letters sent to noisy neighbours and blowsy barmaids from prurient net curtain-twitchers whose moral code was outraged by people actually enjoying themselves in the staid, suburban 1970s. That said; the scarcity of such campaigns of vituperation is what made them newsworthy. These days, it appears that every other day there’s some blank-eyed, dough-faced dullard with borderline personality disorder getting sent down for a series of snide Facebook posts, attacking the poor parents of some teenager who has died in tragic circumstances. Such needless and unremitting cruelty is beyond my comprehension; then again, I don’t see the need for the relentless waves of abuse, directed at media pundits and semi-celebrities who espouse different, or even difficult, opinions. It’s crazy enough that people start frothing at the mouth about politics, but when it’s football that gets the keyboard warriors in attack mode, then the world really has gone mad.

Without question, austerity has made our society a more vicious, bitter entity. Unlike the Thatcher Years when we were all united against the common enemy, the dread hand of media manipulation and an increasing sense of frustrated alienation has caused a proliferation of antagonism towards the most vulnerable and marginalised members of society; asylum seekers, the homeless, the mentally ill and other unfortunate soft targets for irresponsible ire get it in the neck for being weak and somehow to blame for the current malaise. Anyone seeking to point out this standpoint is a load of right wing claptrap, especially on social media, risks getting it with both barrels from the lumpen on-line louts; accusations of being part of the LBGT, cappuccino-sipping, bourgeois intellectual, self-perpetuating metropolitan elite are fired scattergun, without consideration for the rules of spelling and grammar, but often with the bizarre inference such opinions render the person advancing them to be a closet paedophile.

Football, being seen as the property of satellite broadcasters and their dullard demographic, can be a particularly fetid swamp of ghastly opinions and vile, destructive anger on social media. Of course, it all depends how you interact with it; for instance, the renaissance in fanzines a few years back, through the emergence of Stand, The Football Pink, Duck, Mudhutter, View from the Allotment End, West Stand Bogs and several others, enabled me to compile a list of followers who took football seriously, but who understood the deeper importance of the game as social glue that binds proper fans of all clubs together. Sadly, it seems as if I’ve discovered a small oasis of sanity amidst a desert of madness.

The oxygen of publicity that feeds and nurtures the media circus that surrounds professional football in this country can be best illustrated by the level of debate on social media. Facebook and in particular Twitter, are the virtual battlegrounds for cyber firms of brainless authoritarian populists.  There may be less claret spilled than on the platforms of London railway termini 35 years ago, but the anger, posturing and profane language is essentially no different to dust-ups in the distant past, with Everton, Leeds and Sunderland still the front runners in terms of self-mythologising. One essential difference these days is that the targets for mindless macho ire are not dressers, scarfers or stragglers, but commentators, journalists and pundits. When vacuous idiots like Adrian Durham or Martin Samuel post or posit another tiresome opinion that lacks even a nodding acquaintance with the truth, thousands of Carling-swilling Neanderthals, waving their Smartphones like illicit craft knives in Lime Street Station, use pudgy fingers to punch out another quasi-illiterate tirade in response. What the furious fat blokes fail to grasp is that this is exactly the response Talk Sport or the tabloid press hope to engender. It’s the equivalent of clickbait to entice the DFLA version of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells into intemperate invective. It has to be pointed out that such conduct is unbecoming and does little reputational good for either side of the equation.

Witness the recent contretemps between Rio Ferdinand, ably assisted by Richard Keys, and Newcastle United fans. As a former Newcastle fan, sickened by the appalling mismanagement of the club by the loathsome Mike Ashley who has driven me to the bosom of my beloved Benfield of Northern League Division 1, I have to declare an interest here. I also have to declare some sympathy for the opinions advanced by Keys, who correctly pointed out Rafa Benitez, is ultimately to blame for Newcastle’s league position as he picks and trains the team, though suggesting he buy players with his own money is beyond stupidity. Of course, such nuanced debate is utterly beyond the pale in the theatre of social media warfare, where 280 characters is the limit of articulate debate. However, let’s put it out here from the very start; Ferdinand is as thick as a whale omelette. His still unbelievable defence for drink driving back in his West Ham days that he didn’t know Alcopops had alcohol in them, set the bar particularly low for all future public displays of his intellect, crowned by his preposterous excuse for missing a drug test that it had slipped his mind, got him an 8 month ban. His ill-founded, ill-judged and inaccurate comments about Newcastle were predictably oafish. These pundits don’t do any research and inarticulately speak out the top of their hats, continuing to get broadcasting gigs as they were half decent at kicking a ball around minimum of a decade ago.

What bothers me is that Ferdinand’s struggling clothes company have been bailed out by Sports Direct, who are now the sole vendors of his tasteless, USA-inspired range of tacky leisurewear. Ferdinand’s comments about how Newcastle fans should be grateful to Ashley struck me as payback for digging Ferdinand out of a hole. Unfortunately, some Newcastle fans couldn’t leave it there and began taunting Ferdinand about his late wife. Such conduct is simply appalling. This is not acceptable behaviour in a civilised society. Meanwhile, Richard Keys is a deplorable, oleaginous dinosaur. His dismissal from Sky for sexual harassment, for which he has singularly failed to apologise, sums the man up. The fact he cheated on his wife with his daughter’s best pal is equally reprehensible, though I’m not sure the woman involved deserves to have her part in the whole sordid affair examined from a decade distant.

As the procession moves on and the shouting is over, Ferdinand and Keys remain smugly in situ after their 15 minutes of infamy, their opinions challenged but unchanged. Never apologise; never explain. The vast majority of unthinking football fans have still been hoodwinked into believing Mike Ashley is doing a great job and that Newcastle fans, who only hate him because he’s a cockney, are deluded malcontents who demand their team wins the Champions’ League every year. Sadly, it’s still the case that most people prefer a simple lie to the complicated truth.

Mind, things are considerably better nowadays than during the semi-anonymous messageboard era before Twitter, when every Kriss, Kris and Chrissy could adopt a tough guy persona and get away with it. The Newcastle United board I went on between September 2003 and February 24^th 2007 was a bear pit; the on-line equivalent of the Hellfire Club, owned by an ex con Monkey Hanger who’d never set foot in SJP. The modern day equivalent of the Medmenham Sect who wallowed in the amoral cesspit of their own making included David Caisley, who as you’ll recall defrauded me of £500 after I’d offered him a roof over his head, but he wasn’t the worst by a long chalk. Other habitués included an educationally subnormal assembly line operative with hydrocephalus, an atrichorous Munchausen sufferer who used the forum to write pornography , a socially inept accountant with anger management problems, a stereotypical pisspot lawyer, a pair of repressed gays, a moronic expat with fake hips living in a cabin outside Yellowknife and a dentist who has gone from a car crash personal life to living la dolce vita in Dubai, from where he boasts about the number of servants he employs and the gaudy watches he buys on a weekly basis, while his mates back here work their arses off for the West End Food Bank.  How glad I am none of them are still in my life, though I’m glad to know the amiable, retired IT bod everyone liked, as well as a couple of proper pals; one of whom parks his car in my drive for work each day and the other I still play five a side with. They are, of course, the exceptions.

Of course, the best solution is to ignore the bluster and invective and be satisfied you know the truth. As Miss Gartlan, my Year 2 Primary School teacher was fond of saying; sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me or my football team. I’ve got a chairman who does that all by himself.