The Black & White Menstrual Show

Oscar Wilde, an otiose fop with questionable dress sense, a hubristic air of apolitical contempt for the day to day struggles of the lower orders and no discernible interest in football, claimed that it was every woman’s tragedy that she turned into her mother and every man’s that he didn’t. Unsurprisingly, I would like to take issue with the second most gifted literary Old Portoran, behind Samuel Beckett of course, by contending that the greatest tragedy of my life, as I approach my half century, is that I’m starting to sound like my dad. Thankfully, I’m not quite at the stage of dressing like him as yet. Of course his sartorial inarticulacy was a long established tradition; even before I was born, while his peers sought to affect a Rat Pack influenced look, he donned a Geansaí Árann in tribute to his heroes The Clancy Brothers, though my mother was wont to claim he looked more like Charlie Drake.

The way in which I most resemble my dad is in my relentless, but not affected, pessimism as to the on-field fortunes of Newcastle United. Whatever the game, whoever the opponents; Eddy Cusack always felt they’d lose. I’m not that negative, yet, but I do have my usual, barely logical, bad feeling about this Sunday’s game away to the Great Unwashed, especially as the Mackems, having rejected Mussolini style politics in favour of the ideology espoused by Juan María Bordaberry Arocena, must win at some point and simply can’t be as woeful as they were at Swansea last weekend, though that’s not the real reason I think we might lose.

Since Shane Ferguson was shipped out to Birmingham City, where his failure to get off the bench in a 4-0 clattering against Leeds United last Sunday tells you everything you need to know about his level of ability, the very worst player at Newcastle United is Steven Taylor. As well as being the only player held in equal contempt by both NUFC and safc fans, he is the kind of ticking timebomb of inevitable, sporting self-destruction who will give away a penalty for a mindless push, slice the ball in his own net or stand motionless, playing the opposition onside, when the descendants of Fructuoso Rivera grab a late and undeserved winner. Imagine how that will affect messageboards and Twitter; as my friend Dave pointed out, such a course of events will probably result in the internet actually melting. However, The Black & White Menstrual Show is yet to take place; so let us fervently hope it will not happen.

At the current time, the Mackem support is considerably more disjointed in its response to recent events than even our own. A persuasive, common, shared interpretation of their narrative post 31^st October 2010 has yet to emerge; some claim Poyet is the answer, while others wish Ball, a man who looks like an anxious stepfather at a Social Services case conference, had got the job. Di Canio’s sacking is seen as either a last straw or throw of the dice, depending on perspective. No-one has, as yet, claimed they were better off under O’Neill, but nostalgia for Brewse’s 10^th place finishes or the, and I use this word advisedly, “glamour” of the Keane era is prevalent. Most fascinatingly of all, sympathetic noises are made about the Bob Murray administration, similar to how certain among the Newcastle support pine for the equally atrocious Shepherd regime.

What really gladdens me about elements of the Mackem support is the growing realisation among the advanced sections of it (we’re talking relatively here you understand) that Ellis Short is another Mike Ashley; a venture capitalist with no connection to the club, whose first and only responsibility is to the profit motive. His main concern is lining his own pockets and to hell with anything else. Several of them who have sensed this is the case, are daring to raise their heads above the parapet and going public with their concerns, by denouncing their club’s owner in strident terms, as the following fairly typical post on their On The Buses messageboard demonstrates -:

Ellis Short out.

Discussion in 'Pure Football' started by MrOompapa, 2 minutes ago.

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MrOompapaFull Back

Has nobody ever considered raising this point?

I don't care if it sounds dumb, but this man is running our club into the ground.

1) Sold all our best players
2) Clearly Refuses to invest- despite having a personal wealth of $2 billion
3) doesn’t have a clue about the game or what he's doing
4) Insane and consistent managerial appointments and sackings
5) No relationship, communication, connection or even interest in the fans.

Ultimately I think very poor, uninformed and reckless decision making by the man upstairs has led us into this vile predicament. As a fan base, we ought to let him know that we are discontent with his running of the club and that things need to change. We need to stand up for who we are and salvage something while we can.

Actions have long term consequences. Ellis Shorts actions are derailing any opportunity we have to stay at this level.

As someone who, regional rivalries aside, believes passionately in the idea of 100% Fan Owned clubs, I find such sentiments to be extremely encouraging. Obviously it is only a single step on the journey of a thousand miles to that eventual, inevitable point of democratic ownership and democratic accountability, and many of those expressing dissatisfaction with Short still have naive and ultimately doomed hopes of finding a philanthropic billionaire to bankroll their club, as do a large number of Newcastle fans. Ultimately, of course, both sides of the Tyne and Wear divide will learn this futile, unfounded hope of jam tomorrow is utterly unattainable.  

Let us be clear about this, what is of far more importance than the eminently predictable fact that the loathsome Di Canio got his cards, is that many sunderland fans are beginning to question their club's owner. As I will never tire of telling them, Ellis Short, far from being the solution to all their problems, is actually the main problem. Like all venture capitalists, his loyalty is not to the club or the supporters; it is to the profit system. Stepping back from the mind boggling statistic that the Mackems last 8 visits to SJP will see them managed by 8 different people; the incontrovertible truth is that only 100% Fan Ownership can offer any solution to the problems in the game, on Wearside as on Tyneside. I have an unshakeable belief that what cynics call a utopian ideal can, and will, become a reality.

sunderland of course wouldn’t be sunderland, were it not for the appearance of a virulent strain of cognitive dissonance; many of their fans are in denial about the harm being served on their club by Short, as the personal ideological impact of accepting not only is their current owner a Trojan horse for the interests of avaricious, rapacious capitalists, but so were the Drumaville Consortium and so especially was their demi god; self-confessed problem drinker and bad parent, Mr Charity himself, Niall Quinn, the reasons for whose inexplicable departure from Wearside will one day emerge I am sure. Once they realise that Quinn wasn’t a very rich version of them, but another capitalist out to exploit them for his own financial benefit, the justifiable contempt that will be visited on Quinn will dwarf the current loathing the reserve for the player no-one has ever called the Cullercoats Cannavaro.

Not only is Taylor a terrible, terrible footballer, whose rash impetuosity is ever more pronounced with each passing season, his asinine interviews in the local press and puerile populism on and off the pitch make his every act and every utterance a source of deep shame for fans of Newcastle United. It is therefore unsurprising that he is the only one of the current squad to find anything positive to say about either Ashley or Kinnear. While contemplating the enormously high stakes related to Sunday’s game, it is instructive at this point to remember that whatever the result, wherever the team finish the season and whoever plays for or manages the club, remains an utter irrelevance while Mike Ashley owns the club. Such a sentiment would be lost on Taylor, who gives every impression he is more proud to carry an advert for Wonga across his chest than the badge of his club over his heart. Sadly Taylor is not the only one with such an attitude.

I despair at the replica shirted sheep that seem unable to articulate their passive acquiescence to the established order with anything other than a baffled shrug, while mouthing platitudes about supporting the team, but ignoring the regime. However, their  banal tolerance of the incredible volume of horseshit visited upon us both by the regime and their quisling mouthpieces in black and white shirts and similar coloured newsprint, should not be interpreted as a defined ideological position; in an era whereby broadcast and print media are little more than the shoe shine boys of the ruling elite, it is to be expected that many, many good fans of Newcastle United become ideologically isolated and, bereft of hope of guidance, succumb to the kind of atavistic hegemony that made them indifferent to the heroic Time 4 Change march that took place last Saturday, in the centre of town. Those who say “be careful what you wish for; we who are old enough to remember a crap ground, with a crap team and crap crowds think that this isn't that bad a regime” are producing a red herring; it's like saying life under Stalin was preferable to life under the Czar.

This blog post will not be discussing the recent on-field travails of Newcastle United. While it may have been a good point and a decent performance against Liverpool; I’m really not that interested, because it’s really not that important in the wider context of the future wellbeing of Newcastle United. The club, as we are all aware, will continue to languish in the Pelagic Zone of the Premier League, avoiding anything other than cursory flirtation with relegation or European qualification by finishing between 9^th and 14^th each year and going out of the cups at the earliest opportunity, to maximise Ashley’s profit from television and player sales while keeping investment at minimal levels for the foreseeable future. Failing to recognise this to be an utterly unacceptable state of affairs is the clearest example I have ever come across of false consciousness in a sporting context. Yet, the Wonga wearers are not the real villains, as I intend to demonstrate.

The Time 4 Change march on Saturday 19th October began at 10.30; the very moment Gateshead Fiddlers Three v Wallsend Winstons in the North East Over 40s League Division 4 was kicking off on Windy Nook Playing Fields. Newcastle United v Liverpool started at 12.45; the very moment I caught the 58 bus from Whitehills back to the Corner House, so I could attend Heaton Stannington v Whitehaven. Perhaps therefore, I am not the best person to comment on the events of that day, although I had no chance with the second equaliser in Winstons 2-2 draw and was delighted to see Jonathan Wright bag a hat trick as The Stan came from a goal down to overpower the Cumbrian visitors 4-2 and remain top of the table.

For weeks I had wrestled with my conscience about attending the Time 4 Change march; I was fully in support of its aims and marvelled at the superb organisational feat they achieved by creating a truce amongst the famously fractured NUFC support base, whereby previously uncommitted and even hostile elements and interest groups pulled together on this one and showed their faces. This march was one last chance for the previously discredited NUST, an organisation I feel is perilously close to having failed because of their pusillanimous, obsequious inertia, the generally supine Mag, anodyne www.nufc.com and uncommitted B&W Daft to show whose side they are actually on. With the exception of the latter, which has not appeared since the start of the season, they all rose to the challenge to a greater or lesser extent, which particularly pleased me in the case of www.nufc.com as I’d had discussions with Biffa at a couple of Whitley Bay games this season and he seemed somewhat sceptical.

While NUST still seemed more concerned with pushing registration for their conference on football governance at Northumbria University than manning the barricades, their website did include a bland statement vaguely agreeing with the march -:

'It is universally accepted that the greatest asset Newcastle United has is its loyal and faithful fans which help make it one of the best supported clubs in Europe (tenth best in Europe last season).

It clearly demonstrates the frustration that fans are feeling when they feel the need to go to the time and expense to organise a march in support of change in the hierarchy at the Club.

At Newcastle United Supporters Trust  we believe that regardless of whoever 'owns' the club, it is right and proper that supporters have an influence in the running and future of the club, preferably via a financial stake in Newcastle United . Supporters involved in part/whole ownership of clubs is successful throughout Europe and there is no reason why that should not be replicated at Newcastle United"

It wasn’t passionate oratory, but the content was something of a relief after some of their recent activities, such as Peter Fanning’s highly personal and deeply cynical take on the first official NUFC Fans Forum Meeting in September in which, as a member of Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust, he is at pains not to mention any of the other supporters present. I did suspect the motive behind this was the continued demonization of a former NUST board member, who is now part of the Newcastle Fans United coalition, though I may be wrong in that assumption; if so, I unreservedly apologise and withdraw the sentiment. However, Fanning’s article caused grave unease among several people I talked to, with one of them memorably describing it as a democracy heist; then again, Fanning’s piece was published at a time when the official club site included neither minutes nor membership of the Forum, both of which had been promised, so perhaps he was riding the zeitgeist at a time when there continue to be daggers in men’s smiles, to steal from The Scotch Play.

I find The Mag’s website a troubling beast; unlike the dull printed version, in which only Chris Tait’s articles provide anything remotely cerebral in content, the on-line presence is a fascinating, car crash of a read. To me it appears that they value traffic over quality in terms of content and will publish anything anyone sends them, irrespective of merit. I have read some truly awful pieces on there, but I also read Graeme Cansdale’s brilliant piece in advance of the march, explaining why people needed to show their support for Time 4 Change. It was certainly preferable to NUST board member Colin Whittle’s piece in the previous issue, which effectively appeared to tell people not to protest about or boycott the current regime. To me such sentiments are perilously close to placing NUST in the role of the Nottinghamshire based Union of Democratic Mineworkers, with Newcastle Fans United and Time 4 Change campaigning in the manner of Scargillite NUM hardliners. Which side are you on fellas? The fact several prominent NUST members chose to march is an incredibly encouraging state of affairs and one that throws my non-participation into even sharper relief.

Albert Camus, another goalkeeper, uttered the most profound thing any of us are ever likely to read about the game; “all that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.” At the current time I am dehors the Newcastle United family. Consequently my responsibilities are to Wallsend Winstons and Heaton Stannington. On 19^th October, I knew that I would be at Grounsell Park in the afternoon for the game against Whitehaven, but until Friday afternoon I was still torn between Winstons and Time 4 Change. At that time I was informed our other keeper could only be present for half a game as he had to collect his daughter from a gymnastics lesson; consequently I was obliged to show my commitment to my friends and team mates. I missed the Time 4 Change march with many pangs of regret, but a clear conscience; I did what I had to do. I played and I sent my very best wishes to all those participating in Time 4 Change.

I did this having pointed out to the organisers well in advance that if they had been campaigning for another capitalist owner, I would not support them, even if I agreed with everything else they said. The only way to safeguard the club's future is with all of us as equal, democratic members; another capitalist will only line his own pockets in the way Westwood, Seymour, McKeague, Hall, Shepherd and Ashley have. It is up to the entire NUFC support, democratically as a collection of equals, to bring pressure on Ashley to give the club back to us. Only then can we move forward; if the demand of Time 4 Change is Ashley OUT and A. N. Other IN, the future wellbeing of NUFC would not be assured; be aware, NUFC have already replaced Louis XVI with the Reign of Terror. Let us avoid Bonapartism.

Was it hypocritical of me to urge others to attend the march when I knew there was a good chance of me not being there? Definitely. Is it acceptable for me to comment on the events of that day and the motives of those who did not attend? Well, moving on from the spirit of Maoist jiǎntǎo by which I’m aware that my mendacious call to arms was mischievously born, I would wish to invoke the name of the recently departed Seamus Heaney. He attended neither the Bloody Sunday march of 30^th January 1972, nor the subsequent funerals but, at the urging of Luke Kelly from The Dubliners penned The Road to Derry as a tumultuous epitaph for those murdered in Derry that day -:

On a Wednesday morning early I took the road to Derry

Along Glenshane and Foreglen and the cold woods of Hillhead:

A wet wind in the hedges and a dark cloud on the mountain

And flags like black frost mourning that the thirteen men were dead.

The Roe wept at Dungiven and the Foyle cried out to heaven,

Burntollet’s old wound opened and again the Bogside bled;

By Shipquay Gate I shivered and by Lone Moor I enquired

Where I might find the coffins where the thirteen men lay dead.

My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger.

I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled;

And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter

Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead.

Clearly, I would not claim this blog has the touch of genius that is imbued in Heaney’s words, but as a writer I am beholden to interpret events that concern my community. I do so in the full knowledge that by doing so I am exercising my right to free speech and to express opinions on matters in the public domain; what I have to say is not directed at any one individual, but is a general comment on a particularly tendency towards snobbish disengagement that I find disappointing and wrongheaded. Anyone who wishes to object to this is, in effect, denying me my democratic right of free speech as I am not targeting any individual, either by name, repute or inference, in this piece. Please understand that I have no wish for any tedious arguments of insidious intent; the start and end of my purpose for composing this piece is to ensure that Newcastle United will, at some point in the future, be owned by the fans and run for the benefit of the fans. There is no hidden agenda or ulterior motive behind my words.

In respect of this, what I wonder most profoundly about are the motives of those websites, bloggers, messageboard dwellers and self-elected cultural gauleiters among the Twitterati who sought to oppose the existence of and denigrate the participants of the Time 4 Change march. Cynicism I can understand, despair I can almost sympathise with and faceless cyber terrorism I can ignore as the deluded ramblings of brains damaged by too much exposure to motorsport, but the ulterior personal motives and nasty digs at participants and organisers, by those who smugly sat idly by, disgust me. Do those who scorn the Time 4 Change organisers not realise the effect their inaction has?

On Thursday 17^th October, my colleagues in NASUWT and NUT took strike action to fight for better pay. My union was not part of the dispute, though we are in the process of balloting for industrial action. As I pointed out on Facebook, I came across little dissent against this strike on my time line as I have a basic policy of not being friends with anyone who is a pro Tory scab; though I did note with grave displeasure and distaste that certain schools were remaining open on that day. However the events of that day were soon overtaken by what has come to be known as The Battle of the Little Big Hat, which has raised the incredibly important question; what do people mean by the phrase Against Modern Football?

That must be a debate for the future, but suffice to say that what I found far worse than the educational scabs who did Gove’s handiwork by keeping schools open last Thursday, and I’m not prepared to indulge them by discussing the possibility of false consciousness in their ranks, were the bona drag popinjays in their Weir hats, looking down their noses at the anti-Ashley marchers. While some were of the opinion that the march was futile, a view which I disagree with but can understand, so many others seemed to base their criticism on the presumed attire of the protestors. A Wonga shirt may be inexcusable on every level, but its sartorial quality is of minimal importance. To use the dress sense of an imagined constituency of NUFC’s support as reason to effectively vindicate the actions of Mike Ashley is a far greater error of judgement than buying a piece of nylon for £50 from Sports Direct, especially if the antagonistic non-participant regards himself as one of those fans who “gets it” and is Against Modern Football.  Frankly these effete narcissists, rather than the inert handwringers of NUST are the UDM of NUFC's support; shallow, apolitical, vain Roy Lynks in their Casual Connoisseur cagoules. Those not attending Saturday's march, while sneering in the pub at those who did, regardless of whether they were wearing a Weir hat or an NUFC home shirt, behaved in a way that is 2013's equivalent of holidaying in Sun City while Soweto rioted.

Now I don’t know any of the people who adopted the antagonistic stance to the Time 4 Change march other than by their cyber footprint, but I do hope the reason they didn’t participate was because of what I felt was a poorly written, pseudonymous piece in true faith against football casuals. A Stoke City fan of my acquaintance contacted me to explain who Andre Marti was as I’d no idea and to ask if I’d written it; I was dismayed by this question on several levels. Firstly, I had written what I felt was a far better, more nuanced piece on a similar subject in Stand AMF issue #2, which was posted here last November (http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/dressing-down.html). Secondly, I have not written for true faith since issue #50 in 2006 and will never do so again. Thirdly, I was most dismayed by the idea that people would assume my authorship of it. I’m disappointed no-one other than my Stoke City supporting acquaintance asked me directly about this, though a long-standing Newcastle United fan and former contributor to true faith knew that it was not by me. He also suggested that the pseudonymously authorship was an attempt at possibly setting me up; I very much doubt this was the case, though I’m sure true faith would be only too happy to set the record straight that I had nothing to do with the article in question. Bearing in mind their support for Time 4 Change I would imagine that they would be mortified to think their article was written by me or, more crucially, affected attendance at the march, though no doubt they’d be less concerned with the flak I copped for it, at the time of publication and again last Thursday when my strategy of trying to provoke the well-dressed into examining their motives for non-attendance was an abject failure.  

While I regret my atrocious choice of tactics, it is my contention that the self-elected uber fans in their designer garb should face the fact their lack of engagement with the demo shows them not to be operating on a higher intellectual and moral plain to those who marched, or even those who affected baffled disengagement from any desire for regime change, but to be fractionally away from charges that they are shallow collaborators in NUFC's slow demise. I know that neither the Men at C&A nor the blokes from Primark are part of organised groupings, as both the casuals and shirters in NUFC’s support are all individuals with nothing other than a similar choice of clothing to bind them together; this is precisely why they need to engage with Time 4 Change as it represents the best hope for NUFC’s support to find a coherent voice. If Time 4 Change can unite Number 9, Newcastle Fans United, The Mag, true faith and www.nufc.com, it can provide a location for the poorly or superbly dressed unaligned fan as well. The fashionistas may say they are Against Modern Football, but it seems by their inaction they are in acceptance of the status quo. They need to roll their Distant Echo sleeves up; one of these days Sports Direct will be exclusively selling the Weir Vichy, which will have WONGA picked out in tar and feathers. Where will they be then?

So, the march was a success; that much is certain. What is now of massive importance, much more so than the question of regional bragging rights this Sunday (personally I’m thinking of taking in the Falcons against London Irish at the same time to avoid it), is where the campaign goes from here. We need to build on our unity and increase support for the purpose of driving Ashley out and bringing 100% Fan Ownership in. The other question that must be returned to very soob is whether Against Modern Football is an empty slogan or a call to arms for all fans intending to reclaim the game.  I strongly urge a debate on that topic among all football fans, but especially those of Newcastle United, regardless of how they dress.

Disce Puer Aut Abi……

Darkness at Noon

On or around Wednesday 23rd October (24 years to the day since I saw Nirvana play their first English gig at the Riverside), I'll be blogging in exhaustive length about Newcastle United & the Time 4 Change march. I didn't attend this march, as I was playing for Wallsend Winstons in our 2-2 draw with Fiddlers Three in the North East Over 40s League Division 4. I had a decent game and had my photo taken by Adrian Ragsdale to prove it. However, not every time I've played football has it gone so well, as the following post which will be in Barnsley's fanzine West Stand Bogs issue #2, will demonstrate -:

Last time I mentioned, with a shameful few geographical inaccuracies (Higham not High Hoyland; duly noted) events in my life that led on from Newcastle United’s 5-0 victory at Oakwell in May 1983. Since that day, NUFC have played Barnsley a further 21 times, from the 1-1 draw on 24 September 1983 that I missed as I’d started university in County Derry two days before, to the 6-1 home win at St. James’ Park which I opted out of to take in Chemfica 1 Ponteland United 3 in the Northern Alliance George Dobbins League Cup second round (long story). Of those 21 games, 10 were draws, 9 were Newcastle United wins and 2 were victories for Barnsley. Following on from the 5-0 game, I’d thought about penning an article on howkings the Mags have given the Tykes; the 6-0 win in April 1993 being a particular favourite of mine in our Keegan inspired promotion season. However, a good writer should always aim to please his audience and so instead we’ll have a look at perhaps one of the bleakest days in Newcastle United’s history.

The last time Barnsley beat Newcastle was 1-0 courtesy of a Brendan O’Connell goal on 13^th December 1992, which is my ex-wife’s birthday. Considering we were 13 points clear at the top and had a full strength side that day, it should be seen as a notable result. Mind we also drew 2-2 at Oakwell on both 13th December 1997 and 12^th December 2009, showing we’ve decent respect for her special day. However, I’m not going to talk about any of those games; instead, let’s go back to 30^th November 1991 and 180 minutes of abject shame for the black and whites.

Aged 49 and a bit, I still play 11 a side football now; goalkeeper for Wallsend Winstons in the bottom division of the North East over 40s league. I’m hopeless. Back then though, I only donned the gloves in 5 a side, preferring a role up front for Jesmond Vale Blue Bell in the Tyneside Sunday League. I was hopeless. However, like all hopeless players, I was mad keen and would never turn down a game.

Years ago, I was a regular contributor to Newcastle fanzine The Mag and used to turn out for their ad-hoc team against other clubs fanzines when required. Somebody, possibly connected to the FSA or When Saturday Comes, had come up with the eminently sensible idea of getting fans to stop brawling in pubs and railways stations of a Saturday morning and instead kick the living daylights out of each other on muddy public parks, in a kind of semi-organised round robin for the 1991-1992 season. I remember a particularly enjoyable win over a half drunk and half stoned Swindon Town 69er side when even I managed to get on the score sheet as we romped to victory at the Lightfoot Stadium in Byker. Because of a deep pool of available Tyneside talent, it was seldom I was asked to turn up for a home game; away games, as we continued our unchecked plummet to the foot of the table, were a different matter. As we’d only got 13 available in this instance, I was invited to stand on the line as we took on South Riding.

I promise that in future I’ll recount my favourite nights out in Barnsley in the early to mid-1990s; suffice to say Friday 29^th November 1991 was one of the heaviest. Somehow, and I’m not sure how, we ended up in a staff lock-in at Metrodome, as one of the then boyfriends of my 2 sisters-in-law worked there (hello Davo Lockwood if you’re reading) and he took us up for some kind of impromptu birthday do. This came on top of a proper tour round town that had started at 7.00 prompt in Number 17s. Next morning I was beyond ill as I made my way to the big game rendezvous at some public park in Kendray, to discover only 10 of our players had shown. No mobile phones in those days to contact the missing carload. 

This of course meant I was starting. Ordinarily, this would be brilliant news for the eager player, but it didn’t appeal that morning. In fact, it alarmed me, especially when I discovered I’d left my boots at the in-laws and would have to play in 4 inches of mud shod in trainers. Lining up at right back (I’m left footed) behind the worst winger I’ve ever seen, I had a slippery, shameful nightmare as we were torn apart by not just a random bunch of drinking mates, but the Supporters’ Club side, clad in the season before’s Barnsley shirts with the gaudy yellow stars. My first touch was a foul throw. At half time, we were 5-0 down and, with the other players having finally arrived (they’d got the kick off wrong), I was first one substituted, followed immediately by my mate on the right wing. At least he had a flask of coffee we shared during a second half that the two sides drew 1-1; shame about the first period.

After a quick change (the showers were broken naturally), we hit the Supporters’ Club for the only time in my life and I felt quite positive by kick off time after a restorative gallon of ale and high transfat buffet. This optimism was rent asunder as a typical Ardiles era performance saw Newcastle utterly capitulate as Barnsley raced into a 3-0 half time lead, which should have been at least doubled. Somehow that was the end of the scoring, even if the balance of play remained massively one-sided. As I left the West Stand Paddock, still filthy, malodourous and poisonously hungover,  in the company of my euphoric but sympathetic in-laws, I was utterly crestfallen at the atrocious display my side had put in. Newcastle may have given the Tykes 6 goal batterings on subsequent occasions, but surely neither was as emphatic as the 3-0 score that day. Indeed, bearing in mind the morning’s result, we’d lost 9-1 on aggregate.

The only source of solace came from seeing the Geordie fans responding to the final whistle at Oakwell with a traditional Pavlovian response, by throwing the ladder than led up to the television gantry over the back wall of the Kop, meaning the poor Yorkshire TV cameraman would be stranded there until some bugger fetched it back. It was a small consolation on a dark, dark day….

Peace Talks.....

I'm very proud to be involved with Push, the most exciting litzine around (copies available from joe.england64@gmail.com for £3 via PayPal - buy one!!). In  the new issue, number 7, I have a story , A Quiet One, which will soon be up on my parallel fiction & poetry blog http://gilipollez.wordpress.com/ but what I'm most proud of is the interview I conducted with my favourite contemporary English novelist David Peace, which I've published below -:

David Peace was born in Ossett, near Huddersfield in 1967. After graduating from Manchester Polytechnic in 1991, he embarked upon a career teaching English as a Foreign Language, firstly in Istanbul and then in Tokyo, which has been his home since 1994. His first published novels were the Red Riding Quartet (1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983),  adapted for television by Channel 4 in 2009, which led to him being described as “the British James Ellroy,” albeit with from much more pronounced left-wing perspective. Having been named as Granta Young British Novelist of the Year in 2003, Peace produced his greatest work GB84 in 2004, before his most famous work so far, The Damned United, which tells of Brian Clough’s ill-fated spell in charge of Leeds United. After a detour to his adopted homeland, in the shape of his two-thirds completed Tokyo Trilogy, set in immediate post war Japan, Peace’s latest novel, RED OR DEAD, finds him on familiar thematic and geographical turf; Bill Shankly’s departure from Peace’s own Huddersfield Town to Liverpool, chronicling both his time in charge and retirement in 1974, after Liverpool flukily won the FA Cup over Newcastle United. One major departure for Peace is his focus on a “good” protagonist rather than the flawed or downright evil figures of his earlier novels. Push spoke to David in August 2013 in Durham and September 2013 via email.

Those of your novels set in England are set in very specific locations (Yorkshire primarily) and equally specific points in time (1959-1985 to be precise); do you see your role more as a chronicler of untold history and defender of those no longer able to defend their reputations or as an interpreter and prosecutor of the torrid obverse world of politics and the behaviour of the ruling elite during the post war period that marked the decline and destruction of the Social Democratic consensus?

In a word; both. Because I think both roles go hand in hand. It’s an old cliché that history is written by the victors. But the reason it is a cliché is because it is so bloody true. With GB84, for example, I wanted to show exactly the nature and the scale of the forces and the violence used to crush the mining communities and their union, both to defend those people who had suffered and lost so much and to accuse those who had caused that suffering and loss. And if we don’t have an accurate account or understanding of history then it is obviously impossible to make decisions about the present or the future.  I mean, one of my main motivations for putting Bill Shankly’s socialism front and centre in RED OR DEAD, aside from it being front and centre for the man himself, was that, thinking of my own two kids and their education, they would have never even come across the word socialism, if they hadn’t the misfortune to live with me. Say or think what you like about socialism, but growing up in the 1970s, we at least knew what it was and what then its potential might be. That knowledge, and therefore choice, barely even exists these days. At least, for now. Because I also do believe these things return and, more-often-than-not, stronger and more potent than before. As long as we keep writing and talking and dreaming about them, that is.   

You have lived in Japan for almost 2 decades now and published 2 novels of a proposed trilogy set in post WWII Tokyo; how do you view your relationship with Japan? Is it easier to write about your homeland or adopted country?

Well, Japan – specifically Tokyo, which is the only place I’ve ever lived in Japan – is where my kids were born and, as you say, where I’ve lived for the best part of twenty years. And so it does feel like home now. And oddly, perhaps, that only really hit me properly when I was sat on my sofa in Ossett watching the pictures of the earthquake and tsunami of March, 2011. But it is much, much harder for me to write about Japan, or at least in the way I do, than about England. I mean, I’ve read a fair few books written about Japan by non-Japanese and come across a fair few “mistakes”. So I am very wary of adding to those mistakes with my own. So I suppose I feel slightly more confident writing about England. But only slightly!

It has been reported you left England after a sojourn between 2009 and 2011, as you found it hard to write back in this country. How true is that? To what extent do you feel distance adds perspective to your writing? Certainly James Joyce didn’t find it necessary to set foot in Dublin while writing Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake; can you see any parallels with his love / hate relationship with Ireland and yours with Yorkshire and England as a whole?

Yes, I did find it hard to write – well, I was writing, just even less well than usual – during that time. And I did miss the routine I had had in Tokyo, particularly the discipline and the concentration it gave me. And there is also the issue of distance and perspective which, when writing a book like RED OR DEAD, is very necessary. For me, at least. But, to be honest, rather than any dramatic Joycean desire for exile, my inability to write well while I was back in Ossett was more down to my own bloody willingness to be very easily distracted by the likes of Sky Sports News. And again to be honest, I don’t think I really do have a love / hate relationship with Yorkshire; I loved being back, I just hated not writing well. So, as I say, I think the most important thing for me and my writing is to be able to have a routine. And that, for many different reasons, but mainly because the lack of distractions is easier for me to achieve in Tokyo than in Ossett.

You have written about Tokyo’s Year Zero as being immediately after World War II; do you feel England has endured an epoch defining Year Zero? If so, would 1979 be the year in question, or was it another time?

I always think 1979 is a bit of red (or blue) herring. You read the Conservative Party manifesto for that election now and it almost reads like a bleeding socialist tract. So I always think 1983 was more of a turning-point. I mean, after all that had come to pass under that first Thatcher government, and all that they were planning for their next term, for the majority of people to still vote them back in, regardless of the so-called “Falklands Factor”, is harder to either understand or forgive. And if, then, there was a Year Zero for the UK, for me it was 1984-85 and the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers. 1985 was also, of course, the year of the Bradford Fire Disaster and Heysel, the Battle of Beanfield, and then the Handsworth, Brixton and Tottenham riots. A bloody rotten year. But, in my opinion, the defeat of the National Union of Mineworkers was really Year Zero in terms of the end of the post-war social democratic consensus we talked about above.     

You spent time in England in the summer of 2013; how do you feel the country has changed since you left originally? I know you’re a big fan of, for example, Huddersfield Town and The Fall; do you miss the ease of access to such items of culture as an exile? Has there been any marked change to the social fabric of England over the recent past? My cousin who has lived in the Basque Country for 20 years finds England to be more and more repressive with each passing year. Any truth in this?

Big questions, Ian. The easy one first: yes, I miss having the opportunity of watching Huddersfield Town and The Fall. But I do get back about once a year, usually. And as we were talking above, I was back from 2009 to 2011 and got to see quite a bit of Town and also The Fall at the Balne Lane Working Men’s Club in Wakefield. I think that must have been the first time I had seen them in over twenty years and they were as great as ever. Huge crowd, too, a lot of old faces. And the woman behind the bar told me it was the most money they’d taken since the wrestling. But to less easy, more contentious things: I always get a bit of stick for saying this, and I know it’s only my opinion, but I think the biggest change I’ve noticed in England, while I’ve been away, is in places like Dewsbury and Batley. I went to school in that area and it was very mixed. In our class there were about ten white kids and twenty or so black and Asian kids. I wouldn’t ever pretend it was all sweetness and light but, basically, folk got on. Or learned how to. Now it seems me to those towns are not as well integrated as they were. Mates of mine talk about “no-go areas” and the like. Of course, you go down to Dewsbury market and it’s very mixed. But, in terms of housing and schooling, there are more divisions than before. And in those two years I was back in Ossett, the only time I met or spoke with anyone who wasn’t white was in a take-away or a taxi. My feeling is there is a lot more distance and suspicion, on both sides, than there used to be. But, then again, I know that is all very subjective; same with your question about the sense of England becoming more and more repressive. There always seems to be a new rule about something. But that is true in Japan, too. And I’ve been stopped by the police in both countries in the last two years. So, in both countries, the police seem evermore curious about where I’m going and what I’ve been doing.     

  

What are your future writing plans? Will the Tokyo Trilogy be next? What of other suggested titles like UKDK, The Yorkshire Rippers (possibly about Geoffrey Boycott?) and Nineteen Forty Seven?  You’ve mentioned in the past you may give up writing novels after you’ve completed 12 and publish a collection of “very bad poetry;” if this is so, we’d be happy to consider them for publication in Push…

Very kind of you, Ian. Ta very much! But before I foist my poetry on Push, I have to finish the Tokyo Trilogy, which I am doing now, and then UKDK; I see that book as the last of a very loose quartet with GB84, THE DAMNED UTD and RED OR DEAD. Briefly, UKDK is about Wilson, and his fall, and Thatcher, and her rise. I also keep boxes of notes and stuff for possible, potential books and there is a very big one dedicated to Geoffrey Boycott. The one thing, though, that writing RED OR DEAD - and about a man in his retirement - taught me is to think very carefully before you retire. So the bad news is I no longer intend to stop after twelve books. But I should spend less time talking about all these books and more time writing them!

Finally, Ossett Town or Ossett Albion; who do you prefer?

Town, always Town. My Grandparents lived very close to Ingfield, where the ground is now, and when we were back living in Ossett recently, the house we rented overlooked the ground, too. But I think it is more to do with me coming from North Ossett, than anything else. Albion are South Ossett. A different world. And as we know, north and south rarely mix. 

Shifting Allegiances

Monday 30th September was the deadline for erecting floodlights at Heaton Stannington FC; unfortunately some problems with the ground works have delayed this. As a result the moaning minnies on www.nonleaguezone.com have had about a thousand hysterical fits each, but no matter. The lights will be up soon and The Northern League will no doubt be supportive of us. I really hope so as I adore Heaton Stannington, in a way I never quite managed with Percy Main. I attempted to articulate this in a piece I wrote for "Stand AMF," which seems to have had troubles of its own with editorial changes and potential relaunches galore. We'll see if it makes it in to print and whether my piece passes muster in the fulness of time. Regardless of that, here's my bit on The Stan -:

The ex-brother in law Mark is a bit of a knob; frankly he’s the sort of bloke who’d fail a personality test. He’s from Keighley but calls himself a lifelong Liverpool supporter (full kit to play 5-a-sde, Shankly t-shirt to go round ASDA; you know the drill), not that he ever goes to see his team, unlike his missus and their daughter Molly; the ex-sister in law Lisa has watched Barnsley all her life, so it’s natural for her and the bairn to have season tickets at Oakwell. They never miss, now Molly is old enough to stay awake at midweek games on school nights, even doing League Cup ties and the odd away game. All this while Mark is curled up on the sofa with Jeff Stelling, though Mark did get to one game last season, as he somehow got hold of a pair of tickets for the League Cup Final and rediscovered a hitherto dormant love for the side closest to his place of birth, Bradford City; a team I’d never even heard him mention before. Clad from head to toe in claret and amber, the sedentary scouse sympathiser and Dominic, his son from his first marriage, became 90 minute Bantams on an absent father and distant son’s bonding weekend in the smoke. What seemed particularly odd about this to me is that Dominic willingly went along with the charade, as has been a supporter of seemingly most of the Premier League teams over the past decade.

Framed portraits of Dominic, who resides with his mother, adorn the walls of Lisa and Mark’s house, telling the tale of a boy’s journey into adolescence. The photos show his hair and his complexion changing annually, as do the football shirts he wears; Leeds, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Barcelona, depending on who was most successful that season, though neither Bradford nor Liverpool get a look in. Obviously it’s easy to speculate that Dominic’s lack of a fixed football allegiance is a product either of a psychological need to be different to the father who deserted him at a young age, especially in the context of a domestic situation where he has no direct parental influence (his mother hates the game) or siblings to side with. This is a sad state of affairs for the young man concerned, but there is an even more depressing potential lesson for society to be addressed. A dozen or more years ago the loathsome Tim Lovejoy announced that to be a football fan you didn’t need to go to games, you didn’t even need to follow a team; all that was required was to have Sky Sports. Obviously he was talking errant nonsense, but the concept of the floating voter in football terms may be a reality because of the satellite-dominated times we live in.

One of the interesting effects of the pre-Christmas Sky and BT Sports schedules is that they have provided me with a cast-iron excuse not to set foot in St. James’ Park until the Stoke game on Boxing Day, simply because not a single NUFC home game has been moved to a Sunday or Monday. The idea of giving up the opportunity of watching my beloved non-league game for the pleasure of lashing out north of £30 to see the products of the labours of Alan “Lord Haw Haw” Pardew and Joe “Laverenty Berya” Kinnear makes me feel giddy with rage. Those of you who read Stand #4 may remember an article I penned on the rights and responsibilities involved with being a committee member at Percy Main Amateurs, at Step 7 in the Northern Alliance Premier Division; how I told of the sense of fulfilment and appreciation associated with the hard work involved in running a club at that level. Professional football simply can’t provide me with that kind of buzz any longer.

I will never stop supporting Newcastle United at any point in my life, as far as I can predict, nor would I ever wish them to lose, even if a particular defeat could hasten some semblance of regime change, but the once seemingly unbreakable emotional ties between me and my club, have been severed forever. As an example of this, I entered a competition to win tickets for Newcastle United v Fulham on 31^st August, by submitting some important memory of a game at St. James’ Park. As I’m keen on recycling, I dug out a piece I’d written for a book that never got published a decade ago, which eventually made it in to the Percy Main v Westerhope programme in September 2007, did a quick proofread, added a couple of sentences, changed some dates then sent it off. You can read it here; http://payaso-del-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/false-memory-syndrome.html. Two days later, I got an email saying I’d won a pair of tickets; clearly I’d no intention of using them, so I passed them on to my son Ben who took his mate Webby and had a decent afternoon enjoying a reasonable performance and a stunning winner from Ben Arfa.  I wasn’t jealous of him at all; even as I watched my club Heaton Stannington frustratingly lose 1-0 at home to Stokesley in a Northern League Division 2 game.

I’ll just run that past you again; my team Heaton Stannington, not Percy Main Amateurs. In case you’re wondering, to make up for the lack of signings at SJP, the big transfer news of the summer north of the Tyne was my switch from Purvis Park to Grounsell Park. Considering my very public proclamations of my undying love for Percy Main (a club I still have the utmost affection for), you may be asking how I can walk out on them and not face charges of hypocrisy, especially considering the condemnatory tone of the opening part of this article? Good question; difficult question.

Firstly, Heaton Stannington play in black and white stripes, which always helps. Secondly, I only became involved with Percy Main at the age of 43, so it wasn’t as if I’d betrayed generations of family loyalties and after 6 years I fancied a new challenge. Thirdly, Heaton Stannington asked me to edit the programme and run the website (www.heatonstanningtonfc.co.uk), which was a job description that I felt suited my skill set perfectly. At Percy Main, huge amounts of time was spent on ground maintenance and being completely impractical, the idea of me as a kind of DIY specialist handyman was laughable; in contrast, I know I can write reasonably cogently and I am decent at administration, which were things Heaton Stannington needed help with and Percy Main didn’t.  That said, since I’ve got involved with The Stan I’ve found that I’m operating the turnstile, selling the raffle tickets and serving behind the bar (£2.25 a pint with minimum 2 hand-pulls always available, if you’re in the area), not to mention deputising for Geoff our Secretary when he was on holiday; I don’t mind though, as I’m absolutely loving it. I feel like I’ve come home.

In rationalising my involvement with non-league football, I find that the longer I’m involved in it and the more I learn about the grassroots game on Tyneside, the more convinced I am that I have made the right choice to turn my back on Newcastle United. I still love The Magpies, but the boiling anger I had with them has subsided. That said, I’m not cynical, indifferent or in despair; my involvement in Newcastle Fans United is as committed as ever and I remain convinced that 100% Fan Ownership is the only way forward for football at all levels. My mantra is that whoever plays for or manages Newcastle united, or where the team ends the season is utterly irrelevant while Ashley owns the club. I want him out and an elected board of supporters in; it make take the rest of my life, but I’m prepared for the long haul. I will earnestly debate with anyone who says we can’t change the game; we can and we will, but the idea of attending games and putting money in the pockets of an owner, a management team and many players whom I hold in abject contempt is absolute anathema to me; give me Grounsell Park any time, where I will #FollowTheStan as our hash tag says.

Pink Flag

On Saturday 21^st September, I took my usual place between the sticks for Wallsend Winstons in Division 4 of the North East over 40s League. Towards the end of our 5-2 victory away to Hartlepool Owton Manor, one of their players responded to the award of a foul against him for a trip on our captain by shouting “get up, you puff.” Nobody other than me complained about this phrase. From Hartlepool I caught the train to Northallerton, where my team Heaton Stannington won a close contest in the Northern League Division 2, by a margin of 2-1; a home supporter called the linesman a “faggot” for flagging a Northallerton player offside as they desperately pressed for an equaliser. Again, I was the only person in the crowd who demurred at the speaker’s choice of language. Later that night, an acquaintance commented on Facebook that Tim Krul was “a big, soft queer” for allowing Robert Brady to score Hull’s first equaliser at St. James’ Park. I was a lone voice on the thread, complaining about the words uttered. Why is this? Sadly, it is because I must admit to finding the North East to still be largely a rancorous, seething pit of vile homophobia, which is condoned, legitimised and tacitly approved in football and in many areas of everyday life.

In the current social and sporting climate, racism is seen as utterly socially unacceptable, with the idiots responsible for much of the most reprehensible outbursts of linguistic barbarism on social media and life in general being brought to book for their criminal behaviour. This is exactly how it should be. Equally, one of the most gladdening sights I’ve ever seen was the other summer; on a warm July, Sunday afternoon, cycling back over the Redheugh Bridge from Gateshead, I passed several gay pubs near the Centre For Life; many of them had customers outside, several relaxing over a few drinks in their Newcastle shirts. In general, I hate the idea of people wearing replica kits, but the incontrovertible evidence of football fans being welcomed into the LGBT community was heartening; oh how I wish such tolerance  was reciprocated.

The question I want to ask is this; why is casual homophobia and heterosexism not only tolerated but seemingly promoted as an acceptable ideology in football, perhaps not by the game’s authorities, but by players and fans alike in our region? Saturday 21^st September was the centrepiece of the Stonewall inspired Right Behind Gay Footballers campaign, whereby the campaigning organisation that was formed in 1989 as a reaction to the loathsome Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which expressly prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality, distributed rainbow-coloured laces to all professional clubs; the idea being that players would wear the laces to show their opposition to homophobia. However, even if you watched wall-to-wall Sky Sports and every edition of Match of the Day over the weekend you would be forgiven if this event passed under your radar. It simply isn’t in the interests of football authorities and their legion of economic camp followers and itinerant symbiotic media proselytisers to either admit there is something decidedly heterosexist if not phallocentric at the core of the game; much less to draw attention to this fact.

Of course, if you had heard about the campaign and weekend of action and wanted to show your support, pairs of laces could have been sourced from Stonewall’s partner organisation, Paddy Power bookies. The joint press release explained the campaign in the following terms -:

Stonewall has teamed up with leading bookmaker Paddy Power to challenge players to show their support for gay footballers by wearing rainbow coloured boot laces. The laces have been distributed to every footballer across all 134 professional clubs in the UK. Each player is asked to wear the special laces in their club fixtures on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 September. The campaign’s simple message of Right Behind Gay Footballers is designed to kick start a change in attitudes and make our national game more gay-friendly. Paddy Power and Stonewall are asking fans and the public to back the campaign by taking to social media and using the hashtag #RBGF, Right Behind Gay Footballers, during the week and in the build-up to the weekend fixtures.

Kicking off on Monday 16 September there will be a week of activity shining the spotlight on homophobia in football. The campaign will see daily advertising and editorials across traditional media, billboard sites, and through social media with the aim of getting support from footballers, celebrities, fans and the public. Stonewall Deputy Chief Executive Laura Doughty said: ‘It’s time for football clubs and players to step up and make a visible stand against homophobia in our national game. That’s why we’re working with Paddy Power on this fun and simple campaign. By wearing rainbow laces players will send a message of support to gay players and can begin to drag football in to the 21st century.’

 Paddy Power, the bookmaker’s spokesman, said; ‘We love football but it needs a kick up the arse. In most other areas of life people can be open about their sexuality and it’s time for football to take a stand and show players it doesn’t matter what team they play for. Fans can show they are right behind this by simply tweeting using the #RBGF hashtag whilst all players have to do is lace up this weekend to help set an example in world sport.’

As someone who is vehemently opposed to gambling in all its manifestations, as much as I am opposed to homophobia, I was therefore left in a quandary; would wearing these laces compromise my principles by forcing me to enter a betting shop? In the end, I was able to resolve this complex moral issue and decline to wear the laces with a completely clear conscience, mainly on account of the highly persuasive arguments put forward by the Football v Homophobia campaign in their press release on the subject, which may also be found on their website www.footballvhomophobia.com -:

In response to requests from the press and from football clubs for our opinion on Stonewall and Paddy Power’s current ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign, Football v Homophobia would like to offer the following comment.

Football v Homophobia was invited by Paddy Power to be a part of the campaign in its early stages. Whilst supporting the overall aims of the initiative, we did not feel comfortable with some aspects of the language and tone, and so felt that we did not wish to take our involvement any further. However, we welcome the opportunity for further discussion and debate around some of the issues of language raised by the campaign.

Football v Homophobia works to address homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in football, in conjunction with all stakeholders in the game – the players, the fans, and the organizing bodies. We welcome any attempt to tackle homophobia in football around the world, and any attempt to take this message beyond the LGBT community. We therefore applaud the sentiments behind the laces idea central to the ‘Rainbow Laces’ campaign, namely solidarity with gay players.

Our discomfort is with the reliance on sexualised innuendo and stereotypes about gay men and anal sex, as exemplified by the tag line ‘Right Behind Gay Players’. As an initiative with a strong focus on education, we feel it is incongruous to run a campaign aiming to change football culture whilst using language which reinforces the very stereotypes and caricatures that, in the long term, ensure that homophobia persists. There is a long history, perhaps best captured by the infamous Robbie Fowler incident, whereby anal sex has been the focus of homophobic abuse in the sport.

A number of organisations, like ours, have been campaigning for years for a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to discrimination, and we are disappointed to see that the wording of this tag line gives license for a blurring of the already difficult territory between implicitly and explicitly homophobic and transphobic language, and football ‘banter’. For example, the following comments have been posted on Paddy Power’s own Facebook page, under the “Right Behind Gay Footballers” banner:

“I wouldn’t want TO BE IN FRONT…”

“Playing on a muddy pitch haha.”

“Tight at the back, pushing on with a hard man up front…”

“Stand up if you can’t sit down.”

“Kick gays out of football,”

“Sponsorship deal with Brighton imminent.”

The final comment, referring to Brighton, is of particular interest. It was only four months ago, in the wake of a report that showed overwhelming (72% of matches) homophobic abuse, that the Brighton & Hove Albion Supporters’ Club (BHASC) called on the football authorities for help to tackle abuse aimed at fans, often couched as ‘banter’.

Whilst Paddy Power are not responsible for the general level of homophobia and transphobia we witness in football, and indeed are trying to counter this with ‘Rainbow Laces’, aspects of the campaign have acted as a catalyst for the kind of attitudes and language that BHASC and Football v Homophobia have been working hard to challenge. ‘Rainbow Laces’ may have an important short-term advantage of drawing attention to the issue of homophobia in football, but this needs to be followed in the long-term with an informed and sensitive discussion around the contested nature of what constitutes discriminatory, offensive language as opposed to acceptable ‘banter.’

We would therefore invite people to applaud the positive aspects of ‘ Rainbow Laces’ and at the same time reflect on the language used, in particular how appropriate the tag line “Right Behind Gay Players’ is as a means to tackle homophobia in football. The Football v Homophobia campaign runs throughout the year. If you would like to join us in tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in football, there are three simple things you can do:

Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page

Become a ‘Football Fan v Homophobia’: sign up to our fanzine that goes out 4 times a year

Encourage your club to get involved with FvH 2014 by dedicating a home match to the month of action in February 

Immediately, I must state that as regards the last point raised by Football v Homophobia’s press release that I have personally undertaken to sponsor Heaton Stannington’s home game versus North Shields on 8^th February 2014, to publicise this campaign.

While my sexuality is my own business, I must say that while I have friends from the LBGT community who are fanatical football fans, I don’t believe I’ve ever played on the same team as an openly gay player; considering the percentage of friends I’ve got from the LBGT community, I find that saddening if not depressing. What is it about football in our region in particular, but also throughout the country as a whole, that suppresses the right of gay people to be themselves in all aspects of their life?

Perhaps the answer can be demonstrated by how Match of the Day, with crass insensitivity, used Robbie Fowler, whose provocative homophobic conduct towards Graeme Le Saux marked a low-water mark in Neanderthal macho attitudes in professional football, as a pundit on Saturday 21^st September. The truly tragic thing is that it isn’t just the football authorities and the broadcasters who ignore homophobia, heterosexism and phallocentrism in football, but the hegemonic prevalence of a false consciousness among fans themselves. The argument that is tacitly propounded is that football is a working class, macho sport; consequently any behaviour that is tough, bloke-orientated and by extension and definition, homophobic must not only be tolerated but venerated as part of a fetishisation of soi-disant working class attitudes, regardless  of how  reactionary such beliefs and practises may be.

Therefore, the logical conclusion of such attitudes is this; as Robbie Fowler is a footballer from Liverpool, his conduct towards Graeme Le Saux wasn’t crass, boorish, unpleasant and misplaced (Le Saux is actually straight), it was actually acceptable as coming from a working class part of Liverpool and previously having worn a t-shirt to demonstrate his for support striking dock workers makes Fowler a figure who is beyond criticism. Anyone seeking to say otherwise is denounced as demonstrating bourgeois values. It is as if their sexuality is a petit bourgeois lifestyle option, ripe for castigation.

It has to be said that granting legitimacy to the conduct of Paul Gascoigne is an act forged from the same heterosexist, phallocentric base metal. Then again, Saturday 21^st September also marked a glitzy Tyneside formal dinner, marking the 30^th anniversary of the programme Auf Wiedersehen Pet, an endless fountain of macho Geordie rhetoric.

Personally, I would rather celebrate the existence of an open member of the LBGT community in north east sport than the antics of Dennis or Neville; it is 2013, not 1983 and as football fans, we need to accept this. Unfortunately, Saturday 21^st September saw Tim Healey and Kevin Whatley as half time guests of honour at St. James’ Park, rather than an unequivocal club statement denouncing all manifestations of homophobia among our support. How the hell can Newcastle United pretend to be a club for the whole region if we don’t actively seek to build bridges with the LGBT community, who are every bit as important to our support as every other section is.