Undefeated

Issue 6 of "The Popular Side" is out now (£2 inc P&P or £1 for PDF via PayPal to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk). Feedback has been uniformly positive, though a quisling quartet who haven't read it (presumably the same ones who struggled to follow the think about North Shields fans the other week) have started a pitiful whispering campaign against the publication, which is rather amusing... Anyway, here's my article from issue 6; hope you enjoy it and if you don't enjoy it, at least you can understand it....

T.S. Eliot was wrong; April isn’t the cruellest month, January is. Just look at the fortunes of Newcastle United in the opening weeks of 2015: inactive in the transfer window, disinclined to appoint a permanent successor for Pards and displaying our trademark indifferent form on the pitch, whereby the only chance we deluded Geordies had to jump for joy was that wholly undeserved point at home to Burnley on New Year’s Day. We’ll not even mention the annual FA Cup third round surrender away to Leicester, or the fact that the squad was rewarded for securing the requisite abject defeat at the earliest opportunity with a week’s warm weather training in Dubai. This is the banal, depressing reality of life under Mike Ashley.

Let’s look on the bright side eh? While the players enjoyed their sporting sinecure among the beautiful dentists of the UAE, supporters were left to kick over the bones of a dismal 2-1 home loss to Southampton and speculate that the future promises no better as the U21s, as we must now call the Reserves, went down at home to Blackburn Rovers the Tuesday after. Bookending these two games were a pair of meetings that should have been of interest to all followers of Newcastle United who seek to do more about the state of our club than simply whine and grumble about the owner on a variety of social media platforms.

On Thursday 15^th January, the vibrant and inclusive independent supporters network NUFC Fans United (@NUFCFansUtd), created out of frustration with the inert and ineffectual Newcastle United Supporters’ Trust (NUST), hosted a meeting at the Tyneside Irish Centre on Gallowgate where the keynote speaker was David Goldblatt, academic, football fan and author of Game of Our Lives: The Cultural Politics of English Football, which is the first essential book I’ve read in 2015. Those who filled the upstairs concert room on a bitterly cold evening were rewarded with an inspirational talk, whereby David outlined a draft manifesto for footballing change, demonstrating the cause and effect of the rotten core of our national game, the inability of current legislation and legislators to actively challenge these problems and a series of suggestions, both practical and theoretical, that could help us to reclaim football for the people who really matter; the fans. I’m sure the details of the manifesto will emerge soon, but suffice to say, no-one who cares about the game can fail to respond to suggestions that ticket pricing, the match day experience, especially as an away fan, institutional racism, chronic underfunding of the grassroots game, the refusal of many clubs to pay all employees a living wage and the lack of effective regulation of clubs, owners and supporters’ trusts, need thorough examination and, in several instances, legal intervention.

As part of a fact finding tour to take the temperature among committed activists up and down the country, David had already hosted a gathering in London before Christmas in conjunction with Stand fanzine and, having flown up at his own expense (we did treat him to a curry in Café Spice on Chilli Road afterwards though), was off to Manchester the day after to attend a similar event, with meetings in other cities in the pipeline. The purpose of David’s visit was to listen, to learn and refine the 11 point manifesto that will hopefully, in advance of the May election, provide a coherent document to encourage politicians to think seriously about our national game. For more than 2 hours, debate was maintained on a wide range of issues with supporters, not just us lot but those of Middlesbrough and Hull City, a pair of whom had driven 120 miles to be there. Everyone present was able to contribute positive suggestions in an atmosphere of mutual support and admiration. As the meeting drew to a close, NUFC Fans United resolved to work hard to ensure that this appetite for structural change is channeled positively, by holding future monthly planning meetings for the purpose of organizing an event related to the launch of the manifesto at a game in April. The Popular Side is fully behind this and will give any meeting or event maximum publicity, both in print and on Twitter. 

On Wednesday 21^st January, NUST held its Annual General Meeting at The Mining Institute on Neville Street. Created by the storm of righteous supporter anger at the disgraceful treatment of Kevin Keegan in 2008, it seems to me that NUST has subsequently lost its campaigning zeal and stagnated to the point of ossification from 2010 onwards, to the extent that the wider support, if they even recognise its continued existence, view the Trust with either indifference or disdain verging on contempt. At the meeting, there were no apologies asked for or taken and only those NUST board members who spoke announced their names; consequently I am unsure exactly how many members of the elected 12 member NUST board were actually present, but certainly several were inexplicably absent. In addition there was no representative in attendance from either the Football Supporters Federation or Supporters Direct. If there had been, one wonders exactly how they would have reacted to the unequivocal announcement by one member of the NUST board that “public meetings don’t work.” This statement was not a point for discussion; it was presented as a desperately depressing fact. Frankly I find the suggestion that a supporters’ trust would no longer seek to provide a platform for all fans to attend and give their opinions quite staggering and another reason why, as much as owners and boards of directors should be subject to regulation as to their activities, we need the regulation of supporter organisations. If NUST were an effective vehicle for fan interaction and representation, there would be no need for NUFC Fans United to exist.

I do accept that supporters’ trusts are to an extent hampered and hidebound by their constitutional requirements, but NUST’s future plans for contact with members by inviting a select few to attend board meetings or to hold “surgeries” seemed to me akin to the activities of a constituency Labour Party in the 1980s; regulations, rules and procedure being more important than activism. The irony being that during the 46 minute AGM, several NUST board members recognised the need for campaigns about ticket pricing and the need to pay a living wage, not to mention calling for an agreed national political strategy in advance of the election. Unfortunately the seemingly endless round of committee meetings with other trusts will no doubt result in any enthusiasm being squeezed out of a project that should run in conjunction with the visionary work of David Goldblatt that will undoubtedly empower and inspire fans across the whole country.

I make no bones about the fact I feel that the attempt to ride the zeitgeist of spontaneous fan activism as espoused by David Goldblatt has far more chance of capturing the imagination than the meticulous paper-shuffling of supporters’ trusts. However, here is a reality check. NUFC Fans United attracted 31 to the David Goldblatt talk-in and the NUFC Trust AGM was attended by 23 of the 769 fully paid-up members. Meanwhile, 49,307 watched the Southampton game and even 509 frozen human peas rattled round the St James Park pod for the Under 21s game. That is what we are up against; the seeming indifference, cynicism and despair of 99% of NUFC supporters. The choice is clear; we either throw our hands up in despair or we grit our teeth and redouble our efforts to take the argument for greater fan involvement and better regulation of the game to all supporters. As far as I’m concerned, the matter isn’t up for debate. We don’t despair; we can’t despair. We must keep on fighting!

Why I love Non League Football..

Last week's post from "The Football Pink" has garnered me the highest number of views in a week since this time last year. I'd like to think it's because so many people agreed with me; sadly it appears it's because so many people can't actually understand written English. That said, those who matter were highly appreciative; I'm grateful. So, as tomorrow is FA Vase last 16 day, here's a piece of why I love non league football, which appeared on the website for Jim Gibson's fabulous LitZine Handjob, which I recommend you buy immediately from http://handjobzine.com/tag/litzine/ Anyway, here's my piece; best of luck to every team playing tomorrow. Just a shame Benfield are inactive -:

Newcastle United are my professional football team. Being born and brought up on Tyneside, a love for the Magpies was in my blood from birth I suppose, though the first time I got to see them was aged 8 and a bit on January 1^st 1973; a 2-2 draw with Leicester City in the only game played in England that day, as New Year’s Day wasn’t a Public Holiday until 1974. I remember nothing of the game and, with no cameras present; I’ve never seen any footage of it. However, from those early years of blind adoration, I still have programmes, ticket stubs (for big games only; most of the time you paid on the gate) and newspaper cuttings. This collection of memorabilia stops abruptly in autumn 1983, when I headed off to university. I disappeared to County Derry on the day Peter Beardsley signed and returned, via wanderings to London and Leeds, in summer 1988 when Paul Gascoigne was sold. As an act of idiotic blind faith, I ignored the departure of the team’s best player and lashed out on a season ticket, then proceeded to watch from the comfort of R41 in the newly built Milburn Stand as we were relegated during the following season. That didn’t really matter to me; I was 25, solvent and able to travel up and down the country attending games, which we generally lost. 

Watching NUFC was almost automatic, as was adding a second season ticket for my dad when he retired in 1994 and a third for my son when he was old enough in 2003.  This pattern continued until summer 2009; Newcastle were relegated then, but my dad’s death on 1^st August (the day after Bobby Robson passed) and my son’s decision to concentrate on playing rugby on Saturdays rather than watching football, meant I stopped going to St James’ Park. It was a blessed relief. These days, I couldn’t envisage attending St James Park on a regular basis (though I’m always up for a spare ticket), as despite having a good job, I simply couldn’t afford £600 per year for a season ticket.

From around 1995 onwards, I’ve actively disliked professional football to the extent that now I view not only the players, the media camp followers, the corporate lickarses but the unthinking, bovine mass of supporters, mainly those fucking idiots in replica shirts on bar stools and sofas who refer to unimaginably rich sportsmen with the same kind of fake intimacy (“delighted to see Frank playing for City” or “Stevie G deserved to win just one title” – FUCK OFF) that Royalists reserve for the parasitic Windsor clan, with a kind of mocking contempt I find impossible to disguise. This may be seen as disingenuous as I edit a Newcastle United fanzine, The Popular Side (@PopularSideZine),  but I take inspiration from Richard Ingrams who, when appointed TV critic of The Oldie didn’t possess a television. I don’t need to see it to know it is immoral.

If almost everything that is wrong with society today can be traced to the era of evil ushered in when Britain became a Police State under that bastard Thatcher in May 1979, then a similar charge can be pressed against The Premier League and Sky TV, for their collective rewriting of the social history of a game that began among the mid Victorian bourgeoisie, but was soon claimed as the rightful property of the industrial working classes from the late 19^th Century onwards. Football did not begin in 1992; it began to lose credibility at that point. Being honest, from a personal point of view, the 1992/1993 season when Newcastle stormed to the Division 1 title and the 1993/1994 campaign when we finished third on our debut in the Premier League were great; football fairytales in fact. The problem came the season after when the media circus, expectations of fans, sheer amount of money involved and inflated rhetoric of all concerned with the game meant it all began to mean too much. Victories were overly celebrated, defeats sparked a period of mourning and draws were ruthlessly analysed to find greater significance than the bland stalemate deserved.  I could no longer take the hyperbole associated with the professional game seriously. The best thing for me was the number of free Saturdays because of games being shifted to Sky TV.

I’ve always played football, back then on a Sunday morning for The Blue Bell in the Tyneside Sunday League and now for Wallsend Winstons in the North East Over 40s League (we won the double last year; read about it here http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/oldplay.html), but I’d never really followed the amateur Saturday game. Then, I read the best book about football ever; The Far Corner by Harry Pearson, which is a loving history of the game in the north east, which mostly focusses on The Northern League, an amateur competition that has been in continuous existence since 1889. On reading this fabulous book, the scales fell from my eyes and I spent every spare Saturday touring the north east, from Northallerton in the south to Alnwick in the north and across to Penrith in the west, visiting all the clubs. It was a joy to see players giving their all for £10 a match and to experience the integral nature of teams to their local communities. Admittedly the crowds weren’t large (“like Church, there’s few here and most over 60,” as Harry observed), the games often brutal and the weather generally appalling, but I fell in love with it, floating like a peripatetic groundhopper but developing a strong affection for my local side Benfield of Northern League Division 1.

In 2009, when I retired from Newcastle United, I was 45; I knew that the older I got, the quieter I needed my pubs of choice to be, the smaller the gigs I attended and the more intimate my football experience. I decided, having been persuaded to get involved by my mate Norman who was their secretary, to throw in my lot with Percy Main Amateurs of the Northern Alliance Division 1; a team who were 8 straight promotions from the football league and play at Purvis Park in North Shields. It was a dream season; we won the divisional cup, got promoted and I wrote a book about it called Village Voice (which you can have for £2 via PayPal to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk). 

The great thing about non-league, which may also be a weakness to obsessives, is that the game is the thing; losses are borne philosophically and victories accepted gracefully. Also, sometimes bonds with clubs can loosen. On the committee at Percy Main, there were half a dozen of us and it was hard graft keeping the place in good order, which didn’t play to my strengths. After about 4 years, I realised I’m no odd job man and more of a wordsmith, so when Benfield asked me to edit their programme, I changed allegiances, as I was honoured to accept the challenge from a club I’d followed since learning of the rich heritage of the grassroots game, and find myself immersed in the task of producing a quality memento of a game, that costs £1 but is only printed in quantities of 50; that doesn’t matter, as what I want to do is to give spectators a decent keepsake from their visit to Sam Smith’s Park.

On Saturday 31^st January 2015, I saw my 31^st successive Saturday afternoon game of the 2014/2015 season. After a wintery blast on the Friday night had decimated the local fixture list, with Benfield’s trip to Dunston falling by the wayside, I was still able to attend West Allotment Celtic 2 Billingham Synthonia 1. Admission was £5 and hot drinks 60p, so regardless of the quality, we did not feel deceived or defrauded by the whole experience. The game was fairly terrible, with both sides in the bottom 5 of Northern League Division 1, the day was perishing and the crowd was 100 maximum, but it was a great afternoon in the company of several mates, all of whom had jacked in tickets at St James Park, sickened by the hype, the greed and the excess of the professional game. We hardly mentioned Newcastle’s earlier 3-0 win at Hull, talking instead of Benfield 4 Durham city 1 the week previous and the upcoming North Shields v Phoenix Sports FA Vase tie.

The wonderful, obscure 1960s itinerant folk singer Anne Briggs, whose voice is the equal if not superior to Sandy Denny’s, talks of how her experiences and travels across Scotland and Ireland with traditional musicians were the greatest education she had in her life and how the existence of The Beatles and The rolling Stones was something she was aware of, but utterly detached from; that’s as good a metaphor for my love of non-league football as I can imagine.  If the Premier League is the bearded DJ hipster in pointy shoes squeezing sounds out of a laptop in an exposed brick craft ale bar, then non-league football is the fella with the Arran sweater playing the mandolin at a folk club in CAMRA’s pub of the year. It may not be pretty, it certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I bet you our version of “Blackwaterside” is more authentic than his.

The Lord of the Flies

Apparently, down in The Smoke there's a new phenomenon; the non-league hipster. Most often seen by the appearance of Ultras at Clapton and Dulwich Hamlet, they're bringing pointy shoes and beards into the grassroots game. Next Saturday sees North Shields take on Phoenix Sports in the last 16 of the FA Vase. Shields have a squad of Ultras, but I think they're slightly at variance from the ones at Champion Hill and the Spotted Dog, for cultural and economic reasons, as I tried to explain in this piece from issue 7 of "The Football Pink" -:

I’ve got this mate down in the Smoke, well more of an acquaintance really; Irish bloke by the name of Sean. He’s into left wing politics and a community activist, working as a research fellow in the Department of International Relations at Queen Mary College out on the Mile End Road.  Despite completing his doctorate in the quiet of Galway, Sean quickly made himself at home in the intense East End a decade or so back. He’s no intentions of ever moving back, having accumulated the accoutrements of modern life in the shape of a good job, a significant other, an affordable mortgage, not to mention a grand social life boasting a dazzling array of craft ale bars, obscure bands and DJs, a plethora of restaurants and even a football team to support. Sean will admit to having grown up with more of an interest in My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive than sport, though his dad and brothers are still part of the County Wicklow branch of the Arsenal Supporters Club; he’s been to the Gunners with them in the past, but Leyton Orient are his team, or at least that’s how it stands at the present.

Less than 15 minutes’ walk from Sean’s house is the fabulously named Old Spotted Dog Ground, which has been the home of Essex Senior League outfit Clapton FC since 1888. Attending at the prompting of friends, colleague and comrades, and having seen the Ton win consecutive home games over Sawbridgeworth Town and Hullbridge Sports, Sean has fallen in love with the amateur game, to the extent that his season ticket at Brisbane Road is under threat. However, it’s not so much the football as the ambience that has turned his head, as Clapton along with their south London comrades Dulwich Hamlet, about who Martin Cloake wrote so eloquently in The Football Pink, are at the forefront of a loose amalgam of dilettante hipsters attending grassroots games in the capital, whose motto is utterly irreproachable:  Football for all. Good times, good songs and Polish lager. Always antifascist. Watching Clapton and, to a lesser extent Dulwich Hamlet, is to involve yourself in a rapidly-evolving fan culture, that is the UK prototype of the FC Sankt Pauli supporter model that only the estimable FC United of Manchester have come anywhere near emulating in the past. Or that’s how Sean explains it. I have to say that I am massively excited to hear about these developments in London and have put them, along with a trip to Broadhurst Park in Moston when it finally opens, at the top of my agenda for future fraternal visits.

If you expect me, a north east non-league devotee, with more than quarter of a century’s service on the wind-ravaged terraces of the Northern League and the mud-encrusted fronds of the Northern Alliance, to look down my nose at the pointy-shoed, bearded, bourgeois arrivistes at Clapton, then you’re wrong. From my years of being involved with clubs like Percy Main Amateurs and Newcastle Benfield, and the Tyneside Amateur League at an administrative level, I know that pragmatism not purity will always win the day; clubs don’t care who wanders up to the turnstile, they just desperately need money to help keep them afloat, despite any potential drawbacks that may accompany an exponential growth in support. While I have only a vague inkling of what is taking place at Clapton and Dulwich, it is my belief that the social conditions and the culture surrounding non-league football in the north east make it unlikely that such phenomena will be repeated in my neck of the woods. Demographics play their part as well; there aren’t huge numbers of post-modern ironists educated to higher degree level beating a path to the door of the Northern League, though there are always the odd gang of thirsty nutters on the lookout for a new hobby.

Take for instance Ashington; in 1994 the club was struggling at the foot of Northern League Division 2 and were on the verge of closure. A desperate call for support among the local community saw crowds, boosted by many who were either locked out of Keegan era St James’ Park or inspired by the rise in popularity of the game in general; grow from less than 20 to almost 200. Cups were won and promotion achieved, while the bandwagon rolled ominously onwards, downhill without any brakes, when the club decided to move from their historic, former Football League ground Portland Park, to a purpose built flat pack amenity on the edge of town. Their support, revelling in ostentatious drunkenness, often attired in face-paint, curly nylon wigs, foam hands and replica strips, weren’t bad lads, but they often behaved badly; boorishness during the presentation when they lost a League Cup final in 2004 and disorder at the last night at Portland Park in 2008 (crowd 1,945) were particularly unpleasant incidents. However, circumstances dictated the move from Portland Park was their last hurrah; the new, antiseptic Hirst Welfare ground saw a haemorrhaging of support. Currently they draw crowds of 150 or so, with their away support’s conduct similar to almost every other team in the league; a couple of car loads of shivering middle aged blokes in winter coats, drinking Bovril and taking the mickey out of proceedings. The daft lads and lasses of a decade back are nowhere to be seen.

To a large extent, the evolution of a club’s support at a non-league level can be as much to do with chance as anything else; witness how mid-table Northern League Division 2 side Heaton Stannington, alongside the usual collection of locals and former players, have about a dozen newly-converted, zealous fans, none of whom will see their 50^th birthday again, who knew each other previously through the informal networks of the 1977-influenced, anarcho-punk revivalist scene. Their appreciation of bands from The Addicts to Zoundz gives a sense of cohesion and shared purpose vital for maintaining both enthusiasm and motivation when things aren’t going too well on the pitch, not to mention a club programme that includes adverts for gigs and records that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Sniffin’ Glue. While The Stan may not have huge potential for supporter growth, two other clubs, Marske United and North Shields, have seen an astonishing growth in their fan base over the past season or two, which while ostensibly being a cause for celebration, is also a potential reason for alarm.

The biggest Northern League club on Tyneside should be Whitley Bay on account of: 4 FA Vase wins, including 3 in a row from 2009, a superb ground at Hillheads, a squad of talented players and two other crucial factors; the club is located in the most affluent part of North Tyneside and the anti-Ashley sentiment among many Newcastle fans that saw average crowds pushing 500 only a few years back. However, the Bay failed to harness this potential and it seems the ship of opportunity has sailed. Their team languishes in lower mid-table, two managers have left, the support is in open revolt over the gloomy hanging over the club and this season has seen dreadful home defeats; 0-5 to Shildon, 0-7 to Marske and 2-4 (0-4 at half time) to North Shields. For the latter game, the crowd was 859, of which perhaps 500 were visiting fans, many of whom had earlier “taken over” the nearby Foxhunters pub, as if this was a professional fixture, which was reinforced by the minor pitch invasion after the opening goal, the incessant chanting and the massive array of flags. Despite the second half recovery, this game (rather than the Marske massacre) was the most shameful of all defeats for the Bay and marked a seismic shift in the balance of non-league power north of the Tyne. Consequently, Shields versus Marske on January 3^rd was shaping up to be a beguiling encounter, on and off the pitch.

Marske United come from the relatively isolated border of Teesside and North Yorkshire, where Middlesbrough are the nearest league team whose mundane travails (prior to Karanka’s arrival) saw apathy rule. As a result, Mount Pleasant has seen the organic growth of the Chicken Run Ultras, a gang of teenage lads whose idea of fun is to attend Northern League games and sing Soccer Am style ditties in support of their team. Against my side, Benfield, about 30 of them made the trip, where they sang a few songs and lustily celebrated a late equaliser in a 3-3, but didn’t upset anyone. When North Shields came to Benfield, there were 300 of them and they marched up from The Railway in Walkergate like something from Green Street.  At Whitley Bay, the Saturday before Christmas, 60 Marske lads congregated under the tin shed and went ballistic from start to finish, banging on the roof and exploiting the echo as their team rattled in the goals. Whitley’s middle-class and middle-aged support grimaced and tolerated the noise, in a way they’d indulge a teenage son learning to play the drums. You see, Marske aren’t North Shields.

The day Benfield played Marske I popped into town for a pint at full time with friends who’d been to Newcastle v Leicester. Taking the Metro home about 9, I noticed the presence of a dozen or so absolutely bladdered radgies about my age, attired in immaculate Stone Island and Burberry casual threads. They sang an array of Loyalist numbers, including the whole of “The Sash” the entire way home. They hadn’t been to Ibrox, where the NE29 UVF flag that was waved up and down the carriage would have fitted right in, they’d been to Penrith, to watch a Northern League game; supporting North Shields.

If you want the yin to Clapton’s yang, meet the North Shields Ultras. Shields is a crazy town; a former fishing port with an endemic culture of heavy drinking, soft and hard drug use and every single indicator of social deprivation you can imagine turned up to 11. This is a town of hard men who hate authority with a passion; they literally do what they want. There may be anarchists at Clapton and Heaton Stan, but they can’t hold a candle to the Shields lot, certainly in terms of terrace attire. Blokes who turned their back on the professional game when either the sold out signs went up at SJP in the early 90s or when Northumbria Police served them with banning orders, preferring instead to drink and brood, burst back on the scene when their club (which underwent almost 25 years in the wilderness after selling their former Appleby Park home) emerged from the wilderness to win Northern League Division 2 in 2014, attracting 1,312 to the title winning game against West Allotment Celtic. Cycling to Shields v Marske, I went past the Spring Gardens pub and saw upwards of 100 casuals in the car park singing songs about their love of Shields. In the Northern League, where the noise of players arguing with officials generally drowns out the sound of spectators moaning about the game, such atmosphere is a rare occurrence.

With Ashington previously and with Marske and Shields now, the sheer novelty of the size of their support allows the self-styled Ultras to assume the importance of their existence is far out of proportion to their numbers. As they don’t meet any other sets of fans who want to fight or argue with them, they believe they can do what they want. It’s almost like Lord of the Flies, where the absence of a defined external set of absolute moral values causes those at the centre to create their own parameters, which may be unacceptable to others. However, in many cases, these others aren’t the majority when Marske or Shields turn up; helping to perpetuate the mythologies the Ultras create about themselves. Personally, I’m not offended by swearing or drunkenness at a non-league game, though some may be; I’m offended by a UVF flag at a Northern League game, but I’m not going to ask the assembled Shields Ultras to take it down, as a nuanced debate on politics in the north of Ireland is probably unlikely in the context of non-league football.

Of course, I may be unduly pessimistic; Marske walloped Shields 4-0 in front of 452 and there wasn’t a cross word exchanged between the two sets of fans. Perhaps the Whitley away game, like Ashington’s last match at Portland Park, was the pinnacle of North Shields Ultra culture. Perhaps normality will soon be restored. Only time will tell. Similarly, only time will tell whether Sean stays with Orient or throws in his lot with the Clapton Ultras, until they supernova.

When that happens, he can join me at Sam Smith’s Park, drinking Bovril and moaning about the linesman; it’s what supporting a non-league team, whether it be Benfield or Dulwich Hamlet, is generally about.

The Bald Prima Donnas

I know this isn’t one of my cultural blogs, which tend to get about 10% of the audience my football related pieces get, but I’d like to start off with a review of a book; David Goldblatt’s Game of Our Lives: The Cultural Politics of English Football, which is the first essential thing I’ve read in 2015. Goldblatt is an academic, football fan and author, who combines a clear left wing sociological perspective (though avoiding the mendacious opportunism of avaricious Trotskyites) with a deep and abiding love for Tottenham Hotspur and an adopted affection for Bristol Rovers. As a teaching academic, he is aware of the importance of lucid prose and a strong authorial voice, where the ideological viewpoint is crystal clear. He manages this with aplomb and his book is consequently both a joy and an inspiration; nowhere else could I imagine nodding in furious agreement with relentless haranguing of all that is wrong with the game, while simultaneously finding myself wrapt with nostalgic joy at anecdotes and asides about the history and culture of the game, which encapsulates both the past, the present and the potential future of all aspects of the game. He may not namecheck every one of the 92 league clubs by name, but he comes damn close, showing his learning lightly and effortlessly throughout the whole book. I urge every one of you to go out and read this book; you will not regret it and hopefully you will be as inspired by the contents as I was.

I’m very aware of appointing the equivalent of a fans’ Pied Piper, but Goldblatt is nothing like that; he’s a democrat and of unimpeachable moral probity. He doesn’t want to be a fans’ leader; he is simply blessed with an intelligence and articulacy that enables him to vocalise what so many of us instinctively feel, but may struggle to phrase effectively. Before Christmas I was contacted by Tom Reed of Stand fanzine, asking if I could attend a meeting in Crouch End at the end of November about fan engagement, which David was chairing. It was a non-starter for many reasons, mainly to do with work, but David was encouraged enough by discussions with Tom and me to suggest a similar meeting on Tyneside early in 2015, charging me with the responsibility of organising it. This is where things became difficult. In the past, I’ve made literary allusions to Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, David Peace and Berthold Brecht in pieces about Newcastle United. This time, I think we’re talking Eugene Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd.

Under which organisation’s name could the event take place? Obviously there’s the Newcastle United Supporter’s Trust (NUST), of which I am a member and whose AGM was scheduled for 21^st January. The major problem with NUST, an organisation created by the storm of righteous supporter anger at the disgraceful treatment of Kevin Keegan in 2008, it seems to me, is that NUST has subsequently lost its campaigning zeal and stagnated to the point of ossification from 2010 onwards, to the extent that the wider support, if they even recognise its continued existence, view the Trust with either indifference or disdain verging on contempt. If they were not seen as a fit vehicle for such a meeting, and I would privately doubt if the politics and personalities involved with NUST at the board level would countenance involvement with anything I suggested, then who?

The only viable answer was the vibrant and inclusive independent supporters network NUFC Fans United (@NUFCFansUtd), created in 2012 out of frustration with the inert and ineffectual NUST, who still have a permanent seat on the official NUFC Fans’ forum, unlike NUST of course, who got themselves kicked off for breaching protocol after the first meeting. We’re going over ancient history now, so suffice to say that after last year’s NUST AGM, where the elected board promised more openness and engagement with the membership, NUFC Fans United took a step back from organising events to give NUST a chance to redeem themselves. We gave them the rope, but they couldn’t be bothered to either corral some new members or hang themselves trying.

In 2014, following NUFC Fans United’s policy decision to take a step back from organising meetings, NUST had a chance of really pushing on with 3 newly elected board members: Graeme Cansdale and Ciaran Donaghy, who I know to be lifelong Newcastle United fans, and Michael Martin, who edited the magazine True Faith when it existed in print form and I now believe runs their website. However, 2014 was not a good year for NUST as far as I can see. Since their last AGM, NUST have overseen the farcical and confusing 69 minute walk-out against Cardiff that was ignored by 90% of the crowd and hosted a pre-match meeting with Ian Mearns MP and Mary Glindon MP, who are personal friends of members of NUFC Fans United anyway, of which nothing more was heard. This was the day of the Hull City game, so at least it wasn’t the most notable fiasco that afternoon; the Sack Pardew demonstration (dear oh dear…) breasting the tape in triumphant fashion in that race to the bottom. In praise of NUST, they launched a credit union which may be of help for those in serious financial difficulties, though I don’t know the details of that branch of their activities.

Meanwhile, members of NUFC Fans United continued to represent supporters on the Fans’ Forum and launched the wildly successful Popular Side fanzine, which produced 5 issues between August and late December, as well as keeping cordial relations with the whole panoply of Newcastle United supporters. This involved attending the pre Derby do in The Bridge Hotel that was organised by the Football Supporters Federation, which is an organisation I have little time for, not least because of its willingness to accept money in the form of sponsorship for its annual awards from William Hill bookmakers. The FSF’s dauphin Michael Brunskill took an almighty strop with me when I wrote a piece about this in issue 11 Stand (http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/another-hill-of-beans.html), but that wasn’t the reason I chose not to attend their soiree in The Bridge; Whitley Bay versus North Shields had my undivided attention that night. And more of that next week, if I’ve not been silenced by then…  

Despite all the brouhaha about Newcastle United striking a sponsorship deal with Wonga, some people seemed only too pleased to bask in the reflected glow of the publicity afforded by  the FSF annual awards. I know for certain at The Popular Side we’d have had nothing to do with a business that exploits human weakness and greed, but not everyone has our moral standards. We’re comfortable in our own skin and don’t need to feel vindicated by a bookie sponsored ego massage. However, if you don’t win, try not to get too upset. Certainly that could explain the stories of crass rudeness towards Lee Marshall, the NUFC Supporters’ Liaison Officer and a very personable young man whom I’m delighted to call an acquaintance. I mean, I wasn’t there, but to try and reach out and understand what they were going through, perhaps the disappointment affected their natural bonhomie.  Seriously though, I feel heartily sorry for Lee because of what he endured that night, but I have to say he’s not the only one to get it in the neck from NUST board members, whatever (sun)hat they are wearing.

Let’s face it; some people don’t like Mike Ashley. Some people think it’s acceptable to bracket every NUFC employee alongside the owner and treat them abominably. Some people think it’s acceptable to reprint private emails without permission. Some people don’t like The Popular Side. Some people, amazingly enough, don’t like me. All of those things are acceptable in theory; certainly none of them are hanging offences, even breaching acceptable boundaries of confidentiality with emails. However, as an ordinary member of NUST in good standing, I wonder just where the line is to be drawn regarding acceptable conduct by elected board members towards ordinary members. I also wonder just what can the ordinary member do to voice his criticisms of the direction chosen by a supporters’ trust.

Of course I recognise fans fall out with each other all the time; modern life is like a series of smartphone playground spats. For goodness sake, just look at the cyber casual brotherhood who tore each other asunder in the autumn because Grandmaster Sash was proving himself to be more interested in profit than being a prophet. There were people wearing Odor Eaters in place of poppies at the Real Estate gig at the end of October, in memory of all the young men who’d fallen in senseless slaughter on social media. I’m sure they’ve got over it by now; some are still on the moral high ground and others are laughing all the way to the bank. That’s how it goes, but we’re talking about the elected members of a supporters’ trust here, not an on-line Tufty Club.

I realise that many complex and insecure people find themselves in public life and struggle to cope with criticism of their (in)actions. Highly strung and easily led, wracked with self-doubt, these weak characters often seek the company of supposedly strong male figures of authority, who can grant them the reassurance they need, whether these authority figures they flock to have instrumental power, such as club chairmen or other elected representatives, or influential power, by being overly aggressive, alpha male gang leaders. In addition there appears to be a certain strata of volunteer bureaucrats, often to be found in the Trotskyist blind alley of left wing politics, obsessed by notions of their own infallibility, who luxuriate in power, but struggle with ordinary social interaction. Perhaps it is part of their DNA, I don’t know, I’m no medical professional; or perhaps they gain the kudos they crave by acting out the role of the unblinking tyrant with a clip board, ruling willingly obsequious underlings with a rod of iron. Whether such roles are adopted out of conscious or unconscious psychological need, or whether there is an acknowledged element of implied homoeroticism, I do not know. I’m almost frightened to peek beneath that Freudian rock and see the bugs clinging to the surface.

Steve Hastie tells the hilarious story of the Cardiff City trust board member worried that his organisation, designed to fight back against the Tan regime (well done on getting the shirt colour reversed by the way), was being high jacked by members of the Soul Crew who simply wanted to have the away fans moved next to the home end for ease of pre and post-match paggers. Hilarious and frightening, but that’s democracy. Before realising that NUST as an organisation was institutionally inert, a number of us countenanced a simplified Trotskyist policy of entrism to take it over and try to make it a suitable vehicle for campaigning by winning the elections. On reflection we abandoned the idea as not worth the effort, but if we’d been successful, that wouldn’t have been a coup d’etat, it would have been democracy. Just because you don’t like the message, you can’t stifle freedom of speech; there is no such thing as a semi democracy.

However I do wonder where NUST is headed, when I consider the pair of meetings that should have been of interest to all followers of Newcastle United who seek to do more about the state of our club than simply whine and grumble about the owner on a variety of social media platforms, that I attended in the last week.

On Thursday 15^th January, NUFC Fans United hosted a meeting, Fan Inclusion: Waiting for the Great Leap Forward, at the Tyneside Irish Centre where the keynote speaker was David Goldblatt. Those who filled the upstairs concert room on a bitterly cold evening were rewarded with an inspirational talk, whereby David outlined a draft manifesto for footballing change, outlining the cause and effect of the rotten core of our national game, the inability of current legislation and legislators to actively challenge these problems and a series of suggestions, both practical and theoretical, that could help us to reclaim football for the people who really matter; the fans. I’m sure the details of the manifesto will emerge soon, but suffice to say, no-one who cares about the game can fail to respond to suggestions that ticket pricing, the match day experience, especially as an away fan, institutional racism, chronic underfunding of the grassroots, the refusal of many clubs to pay all employees a living wage and the lack of effective regulation of clubs, owners and supporters’ trusts, need thorough examination and, in several instances, legal intervention.

As part of a fact finding tour to take the temperature among committed activists up and down the country, David had already hosted a gathering in London before Christmas in conjunction with Stand fanzine and, having flown up at his own expense (we did treat him to a curry in Café Spice on Chilli Road afterwards though), was off to Manchester the day after to attend a similar event, with meetings in other cities in the pipeline. The purpose of David’s visit was to listen, to learn and refine the 11 point manifesto that will hopefully, in advance of the May election, provide a coherent document to encourage politicians to think seriously about our national game. For more than 2 hours, debate was maintained on a wide range of issues with supporters, not just us lot but those of Middlesbrough and Hull City, a pair of whom had driven 120 miles to be there. Everyone present was able to contribute positive suggestions in an atmosphere of mutual support and admiration. As the meeting drew to a close, NUFC Fans United resolved to work hard to ensure that this appetite for structural change is channeled positively, by holding future monthly planning meetings for the purpose of organizing an event related to the launch of the manifesto at a game in April. The Popular Side is fully behind this and will give any meeting or event maximum publicity in print and on Twitter. 

On Wednesday 21^st January, NUST held its Annual General Meeting at The Mining Institute by Central Station. At the meeting, there were no apologies asked for or taken and only those NUST board members who spoke announced their names; consequently I am unsure exactly how many members of the elected 12 member NUST board were actually present, but certainly several were inexplicably absent, such as Ciaran Donaghy and Mark Jensen. In addition there was no representative in attendance from either the Football Supporters Federation or Supporters Direct. If there had been, one wonders exactly how they would have reacted to the unequivocal announcement by one member of the NUST board that “public meetings don’t work.” This statement was not a point for discussion; it was presented as a desperately depressing fact. Frankly I find the suggestion that a supporters’ trust would no longer seek to provide a platform for all fans to attend and give their opinions quite staggering and another reason why, as much as owners and boards of directors should be subject to regulation as to their activities, we need the regulation of supporter organisations. Currently, there is no effective regulation of supporters’ trusts; if there were, would NUST still be banned from the NUFC Fans’ Forum? Who knows? However, the plain truth is that if NUST were an effective vehicle for fan interaction and representation, there would be no need for NUFC Fans United to exist.

Simply, I do accept that supporters’ trusts are to an extent hampered and hidebound by their constitutional requirements, but NUST’s future plans for contact with members by inviting a select few to attend board meetings or to hold “surgeries” seemed to me akin to the activities of a constituency Labour Party in the 1980s; regulations, rules and procedure being more important than activism. The irony being that during the 46 minute AGM, several NUST board members recognised the need for campaigns about ticket pricing and the need to pay a living wage, not to mention calling for an agreed national political strategy in advance of the election. Unfortunately the endless round of committee meetings with other trusts will no doubt result in any enthusiasm being squeezed out of a project that should run in conjunction with the visionary work of David Goldblatt that will undoubtedly empower and inspire fans across the whole country.

I make no bones about the fact I feel that the attempt to ride the zeitgeist of spontaneous fan activism as espoused by David Goldblatt has far more chance of capturing the imagination than the meticulous paper-shuffling of supporters’ trusts. However, here is a reality check. NUFC Fans United attracted 31 to the David Goldblatt talk-in and the NUFC Trust AGM was attended by 23 of the 769 fully paid-up members. Meanwhile, 49,307 watched the Southampton game and even 509 frozen human peas rattled round the St James Park pod for the Under 21s game. That is what we are up against; the seeming indifference, cynicism and despair of 99% of NUFC supporters. The choice is clear; we either throw our hands up in despair or we grit our teeth and redouble our efforts to take the argument for greater fan involvement and better regulation of the game to all fans. As far as I’m concerned, the matter isn’t up for debate. We don’t despair; we can’t despair. We must keep on fighting!

Finally, I will always renew my NUST membership each year...

Another Hill of Beans

This Thursday (January 15th), NUFC Fans United are hosting a meeting at Tyneside Irish Centre featuring the academic and author David Goldblatt, about the next steps forward in fan involvement and engagement in the modern game. Sadly NUFC supporter politics means a number of people will sulk and not attend; their loss. I'd imagine the FSF's dynastic dauphin Michael Brunskill won't be there as he's still in a strop with me after I posted the first version of this article, which appeared in "The Popular Side" #4 last December; http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/hill-of-beans.html. Well, here's the updated version that appears in Stand #11

I first wrote for Stand in issue 2, so having contributed to every edition bar 6 since then, I feel a strong bond of loyalty to this publication. Obviously I broadly agree with the overarching ethos that the magazine was established on and the subsequent refinements in current editorial policy, otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. To paraphrase Bobby Robson’s hackneyed homily; what is a fanzine anyway? Well, at the NUFC fanzine I co-founded, The Popular Side, we agreed we’d be an A5, old school, not for profit venture, without advertising, website or merchandising. We intend to stay that way; indeed, if we compromise on any of those principles, I’m out of there. If you want a musical analogy, The Popular Side are the mandolin-playing, finger-in-the-ear singers and clog dancing troupe supping Real Ale at a folk club, while bells and whistles on-line operators  like Stand are DJing with their iPads in their Norman Walsh trainers in a wooden floored and exposed brick Craft Ale emporium. Which approach is more in keeping with the spirit of fanzines? The answer, of course, is both, though I reckon our version of A Sailor’s Life sounds more like Sandy Denny’s than theirs does.

Each month when I do the mail-outs of The Popular Side, I also send fanzine PDFs (because this is a far cheaper method than posting out copies, as the costs incurred would mean we’d struggle to achieve our goal of breaking even on our small modest print run) to friends and allies in a growing band of other, inspirational publications with whom we feel a special bond as they’ve shown us that in this digital age, there is still a market for published fanzines: West Stand Bogs (Barnsley), Mudhutter (Wigan Athletic), All At Sea (Southend United), The Football Pink (general), Popular Stand (Doncaster Rovers) and Duck (Stoke City). These latter two publications, along with well-established titles such as United We Stand (Man United), The Square Ball (Leeds), A Love Supreme (sunderland) and, which is the point I’ve been leading up to, Stand have been shortlisted for the 2014 Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) Fanzine of the Year Award. The FSF awards also include categories such as Player, Commentator, Writer and Pundit of the Year, so there’s a chance to further garland the likes of Sergio Aguero, John Champion, Henry Winter and Lee Dixon, reinforcing their roles as our lords and masters in the football arena. Results will be decided by an on-line poll, which will have been announced before Stand 11 appears.

Last year Stand won the title of Fanzine of the Year, but I have to say I was distinctly underwhelmed by this for two main reasons. Firstly, and coming from the era of late 70s music fanzines and loony left politics, I realise I may sound ludicrously anachronistic here, I’m more than a little uneasy with the concept of direct competition among fanzines; we should be celebrating our unity and common, shared goals and aspirations. As fans, rather than professional writers, we have enough to deal watching our teams compete with each other on the pitch, without trying to create an unnecessary, pretend meritocracy involving soi-disant supporter-led organisations that are funded, trained and emasculated by the game’s rulers. In my eyes, every supporter of every club, from Manchester City and Chelsea to the very base of the non-league pyramid, is of equal worth, as we are all in this together. Therefore, to attempt to try and impose a competitive edge to any independent, printed expressions of opinion seems to be contradictory to the founding principles of our own and every other fanzine. If you ask my opinion, Duck is a magnificent read, but I’m more than elated to note the existence of so many print fanzines, old and new.

Secondly, without even going into the question of the value and worth of the FSF, and this really sticks in my craw, the fanzine awards are sponsored by William Hill. Again, I realise I’m in a tiny minority here, but I don’t gamble. My personal choice is by the by in relation to these awards, but I have to say that I simply fail to understand how anyone can be up in arms about football clubs taking sponsorship money from pay day lenders like Wonga, without going into the question of gradated morality in relation to capitalism, when at the same time expressing no moral indignation at the involvement of bookmakers or, even worse, making plain their ruthlessly ambitious desire to win an award that has the name of a large chain of bookmakers plastered all over it.

Gambling addiction, whether it be on-line poker, roulette machines or the local dog track, is as much of a destructive influence on individuals and families, often in the poorest sections of our society across Britain as a whole, as alcohol or drugs. I’ve no statistics to back this up, only intuition, but I’d imagine that payday lenders (aka legalised loan sharks) are often the only source of credit for those who find themselves up to their eyes in debt because of failed punts on dogs, horses or cards. Surely, as independent publications providing a voice for disenfranchised and marginalised supporters, we should not be having any truck with multinational corporations that prey on human weakness and desperation? This is precisely why The Clash didn’t do Top of the Pops; once you become part of the mainstream, you can’t help but be tamed and controlled by the supporters and functionaries of The Man. I’d like to think that if The Popular Side had been offered a place on the list of nominees, we would have turned it down flat.

In all honesty, if you want to show support and give recognition to fanzines, go out and buy one. Most magazines have got a Twitter profile and accept PayPal; far better to pay a couple of quid and have an hour’s enjoyment out of it than pour more money into the pockets of super-rich corporations who’ve reached that spot out of exploiting all of us and are using these awards as a Trojan horse for increasing their profile among the very sorts of fans I would have hoped could see through the avaricious madness that has debased our sport.

Geordie Mafia OUT!!

Happy New Year eh? This is the first detailed piece I’ve penned about Newcastle United since May last year, when I published http://payaso-de-mierda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/in-through-out-door.html on this blog. The reasons for my refusal to write at any length about the fortunes of the club during that time are twofold; firstly, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my role as programme editor for Newcastle Benfield FC of Northern League Division One, having produced 20 different editions so far in 2014/2015. Secondly, and probably more relevantly, the fortunes of Newcastle United’s only fanzine The Popular Side that I co-founded last June have fared so well that we’ve published 5 issues, with number 6 in the pipeline, meaning this not-for-profit, old school, A5 printed venture has occupied a great deal of my dedicated NUFC thinking time. Incidentally, the deadline for issue 6 is Sunday 1^st February for publication a week later against Stoke City; it and earlier issues are available via PayPal to iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk for £2 including P&P or £1 for the PDF.

So, why am I writing this now, when I’ll admit to anyone who asks me, that I care more about the Northern League than the Premier League and I’m genuinely more excited about the fortunes of Hibernian than Newcastle United? Basically, I have to; there are things that need saying, following the departure of Pards to Palace, now we’re well over halfway through another sterile season of sporting paralysis.

At the time of writing, 20 league fixtures out of 38 have been played, during which time we’ve harvested 27 points, at an average of 1.35 points per game which, if repeated across the whole season, would give us an eventual haul of 51 and a decent shot at securing 9^th place overall. Not only is that success in Ashley and Charnley’s NUFC world, leaving us safe by the time the clocks go forward and equidistant from the twin dangers of  relegation and European qualification, but it’s also progress, as we collected 49 points last year and finished 10^th. Another reason why we should start revving the Sports Direct liveried, open top, double decker and bathe in ticker tape while deifying stability, is the fact that the uncomfortable inconvenience of the knock out competitions were negotiated with the minimum of fuss, via abject surrenders at White Hart Lane and The Walker Stadium that firmly offset the unnecessary optimism engendered by epoch-defining victories at Priestfield Stadium and (oh the irony!) Selhurst Park, as well as the genuinely enjoyable first success at the Etihad. Due to the vagaries of the cup draws, we’ve not even had the inconvenience of a home tie to endure, so there’s not been any need to get an extra tenner on the gas card from the Londis on Stanhope Street. In many ways it was a blessed relief that Cabella’s strike at Leicester was erroneously ruled offside, as a replay at home to The Foxes would no doubt have drawn an embarrassingly low crowd of probably less than 15k on a freezing January night.

The problem with writing about a season when so much of it has already passed by is that you can’t retrospectively stop at what seem to be genuinely important points and analyse them contemporaneously; though one of the benefits of the passage of time is that the significance of events can be more properly assessed, which adds an uncharacteristic veneer of sober reflection so often missing from the more intemperate prosodic explosions of opinion on Newcastle United that all too often seem to have been composed by 4 year olds with earache and a stock of unsold sun hats. As I repeatedly said last season, my mantra was that it didn’t matter who played for or who managed the club, or where we finished in the table while Mike Ashley was in charge. Now, as then, all that matters is that we get Ashley OUT and 100% Fan Ownership IN, though I’m prepared to accept 51% as a transitional demand. The events of the past 5 months haven’t changed my opinion one iota, regardless of the day to day petty dramas related to following Newcastle United.

The opening day, glass half-full acknowledgement of the fact the team had taken a reasonable shot at Man City, when debutant Ayoze was a fraction away from an equaliser, turned to grumpy disappointment at an inability to get more than a point away to a woeful Villa, which in turned metamorphosed into outright indignation when the astonishing sight of a Mike Williamson goal was trumped by two points carelessly tossed away in injury time at home to Palace (them again!).  The following international break wasn’t a cooling off period, but a chance to turn up the gas under the pressure cooker of our support, resulting in the annual fiasco away to Southampton that was garlanded with further evidence of the disgraceful, unprofessional conduct of John Carver, a man appointed as assistant to Pards in yet another of those ham-fisted, quasi populist gestures Newcastle United always does so badly, who launched a foul-mouthed tirade at fans who’d made the journey to the south coast and dared to boo after a pitiful display, offering all comers a go the following Monday at training. Never mind the abysmal showing on the pitch by dem Pards Boys, Carver who ought to have been dismissed for gross professional misconduct following his crass touchline brawl at Wigan in March 2013, had surely transgressed once too often and consequently made his position at the club untenable; hadn’t he?

This is Newcastle United under Mike Ashley we’re talking about, so nothing happened to either Pardew, Carver or any other the other third rate balls, bibs and cones Geordie Mafia charlatans stealing a living from our once proud club. Instead, we went 2-0 down to Hull City at home, before Cisse rescued us and Brewse, having missed out on both a victory and a new job offer, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry in the post-match interviews. Pardew wasn’t so much vindicated as ignored by the support, along with the alleged 20,000 Sack Pardew posters that were conspicuous by their absence in the city and in the ground, despite a fictional narrative that claimed confiscation by stewards had hampered the planned protest. Soon Pards was doing his crying in the rain at Stoke as we lost 1-0 on a filthy Monday night, three days after Ashley had apparently told a journalist in a London wine bar that the manager was finished if we lost again. We did, he wasn’t and October dawned with us second bottom of the table. It was beginning to look a lot like 2008/2009 redux…

Around this time Newcastle’s support, never known to pass up the opportunity for hysterical, kneejerk over reaction and having already decided last summer that Ayoze was “shite” because he came from the Spanish second division and didn’t cost £20m, were announcing all across social media platforms that, without exception, the players we’d signed were garbage and that relegation was inevitable. Lo and behold Cisse, a genuinely likeable fellow even before he executed a glorious, textbook forearm smash on the loathsome Seamus Coleman, grabbed another brace in an entertaining 2-2 with Swansea. From such tiny acorns, a run was assembled. Firstly the Leicester game kicked off an hour late in a convoluted miasma of failed public transport and a sheared bracket on the massive telly in Level 7 of the Leazes End, before perhaps the most ironic and most fitting of scorers, the almost universally scorned Gabriel Obertan, won a tense game with a strike that made the pavements of Gallowgate and Stowell Street shake, such was the acclamation with which it was greeted. The next week, we won at Spurs; going in at half time a goal behind (allowing revisionists to subsequently claim this to be a lucky or undeserved victory, to suit their own, spiteful agenda), we roared back at them and won 2-1. After that, wholly deserved victories over Man City in the League Cup, a woeful Liverpool, then West Brom and QPR seemed to have changed the timbre of the season; we’d gone from 19^th to 5^th and the Sack Pardew operation had gone into hibernation, licking its wounds. Perhaps the players we’d signed weren’t so bad after all. Frankly, if someone is heard claiming that Jamaat “offers nothing,” they ought to have their season ticket confiscated and be forced to endure videos of Malcolm Brown’s performances in 1984/1985.

Of course, this is Newcastle and a non-existent, over-hyped crisis is never more than a dozen tweets away; a 1-0 loss to West Ham and a point at Burnley saw wailing and moaning back to September levels, that were only quelled by our (scarcely believable) third successive home win over Chelsea. 

The problem with that game is that Rob Elliott, who was more than capably performing with his usual quiet, efficient dignity in place of Krul’s ego, got injured, meaning Jak Alnwick was the only feasible choice in goal, as Karl Darlow had been loaned immediately back to Forest after we signed him, showing characteristic NUFC forward thinking. The problem with Alnwick isn’t just that he’s hopeless, which he is, it’s that he has zero self-confidence, no doubt as a result of being told earlier in the autumn that he wouldn’t be getting a contract next season and that if he could find himself a club in the January window, he could go for free; it’s probably difficult to come back from sustaining that crushing blow to your ego and make a convincing fist of taking up the position as the last line of defence in the most scrutinised league in the world, for a club with the most unforgiving set of supporters imaginable. Mind it still doesn’t excuse the fact he was at fault for 3 if not all 4 of the Spurs goals in the League Cup disaster in what was the biggest game of the season, though that’s not how much of the support regarded that particular tie, depressingly enough. A resolute refusal to view, or even acknowledge the existence of, a bigger picture and instead to focus entirely on regional skirmishes makes so much of our support seem desperately parochial.

It isn’t quite a JFK moment, but I can tell you exactly where I was when Adam Johnson scored for the Mackems on December 21^st. On the shortest day of the year, I was in a privately run care home in Whitley Bay, attempting to negotiate a way to bring an elderly relative, who was being detained there against her will after a stay in hospital, home for Christmas. As the Mackems broke, a disturbance in the hallway turned out to be a visibly distressed 85 year old man soiling himself, while several frail, shrunken old women lacking capacity, held their baby dolls tightly and cried out loud, asking their mothers to come and save them. All the while, the radio commentary on the game fought for primacy amid this maelstrom with an unnecessarily loud loop of the Phil Spector Christmas Album, jammed on repeat. This was reality, or a version of it, for some of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of society; to see their disconnected, baffled, uncomprehending distress was enough to make one weep. Sometimes, we really need to get a sense of perspective about football.

Two days after this game, Mike “The Mouth” Elliott: radio personality, comedian, actor, folk singer, proud Socialist, near neighbour and fanatical sunderland fan, died in hospital after a brave 18 month battle against oesophageal cancer. In all honesty, I am glad to know that the last game played during his lifetime saw his team come out on top; heading for oblivion can never be seen as anything other than tragic, but I’m sure the knowledge of Adam Johnson’s goal will have provided Mike with some comfort. Perhaps those who claimed that a fourth successive derby defeat had “ruined Christmas” could ponder on the last two paragraphs.

Anyway, a predictable Boxing Day loss at Old Trafford, where the highpoint of a superb Cisse penalty wasn’t much of a highpoint at all, was followed by the visit of Everton. This was something of a watershed moment, as it was my first visit to SJP this season. Indeed, the last time I’d seen a full Newcastle game, other than half watching the Man City home game in the Irish Centre while trying to concentrate on Cork v Tipp in the All Ireland hurling semi-final and catching the last half hour of the Man City League Cup tie in the pub after playing five-a-side, was the visit of Everton last season, courtesy of a freebie from my mate Gary who had been at work. We’ll ignore my walk-in at the Cardiff game, when I arrived after 86 minutes and saw a brace of goals for nowt. This time, I actually bought tickets, as part of Ben’s Christmas Present. Well worth the £74 I shelled out they were too.

The unpalatable truth for many of the naysaying doom-mongers among our support, who insist that Newcastle simply can’t play well and that the win was all because Everton have turned to shit this season, is that we played really well, thoroughly merited the victory and have some damn fine players on our books. Obviously there are weaknesses, such as in goal, at centre back and up front, but with Sissoko, Colback and Tiote all having excellent games and a front pairing of Cisse and Perez being by turns reliable and inspired, not to mention good shifts from Janmaat and Colo, this was a genuinely enjoyable performance. Particularly praiseworthy was the way an early goal did not knock the team out of their stride, as Newcastle more or less controlled the game from that point on. Everton’s second goal gave the score an unfair slant, but showed again that Alnwick, who hesitated fatally before coming off his line, simply hasn’t got what it takes to be a top flight keeper.

The biggest irony about this game was that it was to be Pardew’s last. Having been relentlessly hounded and excoriated for his side’s timidity and inability to impose themselves on games after going behind almost from the day he was appointed, here was a passionate and professional performance that ensured his departure was on something of a personal high note. After all the screaming and crying all over social media platforms by on-line merchandising salesmen who previously sang hosannas in his name, Pardew is able to leave Newcastle United on his own terms, double his salary and provide Ashley with £4m compensation as well. You simply couldn’t make it up, could you?

Now, don’t get me wrong, while I wasn’t opposed to Pardew’s appointment,  I think he is a smarmy, egotistical clown; concerned as much with accepting unjustified praise as he was with deflecting righteous criticism. He may be tactically more astute than Chris Hughton, but he’s vastly inferior as a man. I despised Pardew’s defence of Ashley and lost all sympathy for him as a manager after he woefully mismanaged the players given to him in the January 2013 transfer window. Even last season’s pre-Christmas window of adequacy paled into insignificance once Cabaye was sold and performances nosedived to an almost unspeakable extent, meaning any groundswell of sympathy for Pardew was decidedly ephemeral. All he had to do was open his mouth to make people immediately withdraw their support for him.

However, and this is the whole kernel of the debate, I did not see the departure of Pardew as being a necessarily good thing in itself. With Ashley remaining at the helm, his particular personal philosophy will always hold greater influence on the fortunes of the club than any of the subordinate personnel involved. Consequently I have always warned those wilful, naïve or blinkered hot heads who demanded Pardew’s heart on a platter to be careful what they wished for. It seems to me the issue that has been conspicuously ignored has been any thought about the identity or even quality of Pardew’s likely replacement, as football clubs, Newcastle United in particular, aren’t adept at succession planning. Also, it’s important to factor in the Ashley-inspired job description for the next craven bootlicker who’ll wash up on Barrack Road to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Magpies for the next couple of seasons. It is all well and good trumpeting Bielsa and Remi Garde on Twitter, but one thing that we all ought to have learned about following Newcastle United in the Ashley era is that all speculation is, by definition, a fruitless pastime. Gossip is ultimately pointless when the club appears to have combined Trappism with a vow of omerta when it comes to public speaking. We simply do not know who will be appointed, but there is always the opportunity for an uneducated guess that fails to recognise, as the sagacious Matt Charlton pointed out in issue 3 of The Popular Side, in all his time at the club, Ashley has never once given the fans what they wanted. Even replacing Allardyce with Keegan wasn’t done by popular demand; it happened almost quixotically. Now we are presented with the exact opposite of that change; replacing a long-ball bullshitter not with a hero, but with a villain.

The Burnley game on New Year’s Day was a strange affair; groggily staring through red-rimmed eyes and sweating out vast quantities of G&T, Prosecco and bottled Black Sheep, I enjoyed a first half that saw Newcastle well on top and Burnley, having hit the post in the opening seconds, only score because of a farcical own goal that must be blamed on Alnwick. At half time, all looked good, before a second half collapse that, while perhaps suggesting that to blame Pards for demotivating interval inanities was aiming ire at the wrong man, saw us lucky to hang on to a point. Unquestionably, Sean Dyche schooled his side well to push forward and in the shape of Ings and Barnes they had a pair of fluid, energetic front men who caused us all manner of problems. Taylor’s injury was desperately unfortunate, but the initiative was handed to the visitors courtesy of some personal nightmares (Alnwick, Colo and Tiote mainly), as well as some tactical idiocy by Carver.

At the break you would have to say his team selection had been vindicated as we’d managed to score in the opening half hour for the first time this season, but his substitutions and tactical incompetence in the second period showed that he should never be within a million miles of the job at a club who ought to have fired him almost 2 years ago, despite one clown on Twitter saying he should get the job permanently if he gave Ben Arfa another go. Words failed me when I read that, as they did when Adam Armstrong arrived on the pitch. Riviere was having a good game; admittedly he’d missed a presentable chance early on, but he was looking alright and holding the ball up. It was inexplicable to withdraw him after less than an hour for a 17 year old whose only touch in the remainder of the game was to inadvertently set up Sissoko for the third, by accidentally spurning an open goal. When Taylor was injured, the opportunity to bring on Haidara was there, by moving Dummett to centre half. Instead we ended up with 2 left backs on the pitch when Gouffran was withdrawn for Haidara. Surely Cabella, the one real disappointment from last summer’s signings (we’ll draw a veil over the Tyneside career of NUFC legend Fecundo Ferraya), ought to have been brought on to play wide left? It was as infuriating as it was preventable.

When looking for a silver lining, it could be argued that victory would have given us 29 points and probably ensured Carver got the job until the end of the season. Ashley no doubt may well still do this, on the basis that he won’t have to shell out any compensation and that a cheap option is always the preferable one where Newcastle United are concerned, but the longer Carver remains in post, the less likely he is to get the job. This means we will have to endure a few defeats (which will allow on-line Cassandras to claim we’re in a relegation dog fight of course), for the greater good. Certainly the howls of derision at full time after the Leicester FA Cup defeat left Charnley and Carr in no doubt what the support are thinking. Steve Brewse showed the way to lose in the cup; change your team but try your best, as losing 2-0 to Arsenal is no disgrace; certainly it was a better audition for the job than Carver has given.

In fact, Carver has made Pardew seem dignified in comparison, so desperate is he for the NUFC top job; nauseatingly sentimental paeans to Sir Bobby prior to Burnley, gushing praise of the owner and former manager in the days following that one, a cup team selection that would struggle to win a game in the Conference alongside 5 mysterious “niggles” to senior players that will no doubt clear up before the ritual humiliation at Stamford Bridge this weekend, topped off with borderline xenophobic nonsense about foreign players not understanding the cup. That’s the kind of guff that appeals to Wetherspoons drinkers who adopt Carver’s trademark wardrobe of polo shirt and Adidas trackies; Carver may look like he’d be more suited to driving for Byker and Waterline than managing a football club, but he’d be prepared to change his name to Juan Cava if Ashley intimated he’d like a foreign coach in charge at SJP. Honestly, Craig Bellamy was wrong to throw a chair at Carver; it should have been a tactical nuclear warhead. Get out of our club, you Two Ball Lonnen bastard, get out of our club.  Geordie Mafia OUT!!

If I were asked to name the person I’d like to see managing Newcastle United, I’d say Aitor Karanka. What he has done with Middlesbrough is sensational, both in terms of results, style of play and player recruitment. Admittedly this is in the Championship and Boro are no means certain to go up. If they do, I believe Karanka will leave as he is ultimately destined for a high-profile La Liga job and won’t want relegation, which would be inevitable for Boro, on his CV.  He may wish to find an intermediate staging post, which is where the NUFC job could be a perfect fit; come to Newcastle, secure a League Cup win and a top 6 spot, then head back to Bilbao and win the title for Euskal Herria. Sounds appealing doesn’t it? Sadly, it won’t happen. None of it.

Being honest I think Carver will be handed the job on an interim basis, possibly until the end of the season. We won’t do as well as if Pardew had remained, which means a Top 10 spot will elude us, meaning Ashley and Charnley have a tangible reason for ensuring Carver isn’t kept on. Then we’ll get a new boss. Almost certainly it’ll be another member of the Premier League recycling bin, probably Bruce or even McLaren, who can come to utter bland platitudes, run a tight ship, keep the football as grey and sterile as we’re used to, while turning a good profit in the transfer market that, together with the TV money, keep Ashley’s investment safe. This will fail to ignite any passion among the support who’ll be as underwhelmed as I am at the thought of another ride not on football’s rollercoaster of emotions, but a mobility scooter with the brakes jammed on.

If only, if only, NUFC would dare to fail; be spontaneous and take a risk. Bring in a young and exciting foreign coach like Karanka or Tuchel and try to make watching the club exciting again. Who am I trying to kid?

Finally though, I must pay tribute to the Sack Pardew campaign. I didn’t agree with their message or their methods, but I respect them for donating the surplus of their donations to the Making Winter Warmer community charity. Well done. You have my total respect and admiration for this gesture.

Off the Buses

I'd like to thank John and Dave, two fine gents who gave me lifts there and back from Newcastle yesterday so I could see Juan Cava fail his audition as replacement for Pards. In all seriousness, the lack of public transport yesterday was a disgrace and that's why I penned this article ofr "The Popular Side" issue #5, which is available via PayPal from iancusack@blueyonder.co.uk for £2 inc P&P or £1 for the PDF -:

The 1980s began in grand style; the archetypal Thatcherite decade was less than 3 hours old when I started vomiting the contents of half a dozen semi digested cans of McEwans Export into a hedge on Rochester Terrace at the bottom of Holly Hill in Felling. Thankfully I recovered in time to walk to and from town to see Peter Cartwright, Alan Shoulder (pen) and Tommy Cassidy grab the goals in a 3-1 win over Sunderland, back in the days when we sometimes actually beat them. Indeed, I remember us doing them again 3-1, courtesy of a Peter Beardsley hat-trick, on New Year’s Day 1985. My old man was at that one, as well as the next year when we drew 2-2 with a very handy Everton side, partly as a result of Billy Whitehurst doing Paul Bracewell; for both of those games, I was lucky enough to cop a lift.

The 1990s didn’t start off so well on the pitch; a 4-1 hammering by Wolves, with Steve Bull grabbing all of them in a 12 minute spell. Two things stand out about that game; our goal was a superb Kevin Brock free kick at the Gallowgate and when they went 3-0 up, someone jumped out the Milburn Paddock and started throttling Jim Smith on the running track. These days you’d get a life ban for that sort of carry on; back then the Bald Eagle apologized to the fella for his tactics and the result. At least it gave us something to laugh about when we trudged back across the Tyne Bridge, up Deckham bank, along Split Crow Road and into The Greyhound for a gallon of Ex.

Fast forward to 1994; we beat a poor Man City 2-0 and I walked there and back then as well. However since we were living in Spital Tongues at the time, it wasn’t too much of an ordeal. We were in the same house when 1997 came calling, but the 3-0 battering of Leeds in what was Kevin Keegan’s last home game of his first spell, took place without me as we were snowed in at the in-laws’ place in South Yorkshire. By New Year’s Day 2003, I’d moved across the city to High Heaton and the 1-0 win over Liverpool saw a brisk walk in, a load of pints afterwards and a taxi home, with the same story being true of the 2-1 win over Birmingham City in 2005 and the 2-2 draw with Manchester United in 2007, which was the last time we played at home on January 1st.

What links all these games is that in every instance over the past 34 years, there has been zero public transport on the first day of the year. Considering my first ever game was the 2-2 draw with Leicester on January 1^st 1973, on the day my other team Hibs saw off Hearts by the small matter of 7-0, with my dad again doing the driving, there is an almost knocking bet that the past 42 years have seen a total lack of public transport on New Year’s Day. That, I feel, is a scandalous state of affairs.

It came as something of a shock to discover NYD only became a statutory public holiday in 1974; before then it was a voluntary, generally regional thing. Presumably our geographical proximity to the Scotch enabled us to see New Year as a major date in the football calendar. The world is a very different place these days; we shop 364 days of the year for a start and I’m sure town will be open for people itching to spend their way out of a recession and into debt. Unfortunately, they’ll not be doing it on the bus or Metro. So what you might say; well, what about us non drivers? How am I supposed to get from my current abode in Tynemouth to SJP for the Burnley game and back again? The choices appear to be walk, cycle or lash out a fortune on a taxi. This is ridiculous whichever way you look at it.

In late November, when Nexus announced their festive travel timetable, I immediately emailed Lee Marshall, the Fans’ Liaison Officer at the club, Norman Watson the Chair of NUST, the Altoonative Travel website (who had no idea there were no buses on New Year’s Day, depressingly enough) and the Football Supporters’ Federation. The latter organisation didn’t get back to me; presumably because Michael Brunskill is still in a sulk after my article in issue 4, questioning the moral basis to the FSF awards being sponsored by a bookmaker. Norman did get back to me after about a week, offering to ask Lee Marshall about this subject. However, Lee responded to me almost immediately the Friday morning I wrote to him.

Lee is a smashing lad, and I feel desperately ashamed that he suffered from boorish ignorance from someone who should know better at the FSF / NUFC Fans United pre Derby do in The Bridge Hotel, but he was utterly unable to offer anything other than sympathy for my plight. However well he dressed up his words, basically he could only say “tough” and make it clear the club was utterly unable to intervene with Nexus. Nor were the club willing, or possibly able, to sort out alternative transport for fans from outlying areas by booking a fleet of buses. As he reasonably pointed out, which areas would they run them from?

In retrospect, we all should have been quicker off the mark about this one, contacting Nexus in July when the fixtures were released, to try and sort something out. I fully support the RMT drivers in their entitlement to a holiday, but I’m sure triple time for a skeleton Metro service from 11 to 7, same as Boxing Day last year versus Stoke, as well as similarly reduced buses from Arriva, Go North East and Stagecoach, could have solved this logistical nightmare. Instead, it looks like I’ll have to miss this game, unless anyone comes up with a bright idea for transporting me and 50,000 others to and from this game, especially the non drivers and those who fancy a last few holiday period jars before the horror of January really kicks in.