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Opinion

Standing on the shoulders of giants

1 year ago
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So it’s upon us. Nearly. A Newcastle United match that could define a lifetime.

A lifetime which so far, for me at least, has yielded more downs than ups when it comes to Newcastle United.

I turned 40 on my last birthday, life begins there as they say, and while I’m excited and nervous about Sunday, I look at my 10-year-old son and see the exact same feelings, and see the exact same Newcastle United as I saw.

Going back in history, I was born in 1982 in Hexham, by dint of the fact that the first bus to arrive to take my mam to hospital was going in that direction. I actually lived in Crawcrook from when I returned home.

My parents ran the village shop but in an economy struggling, ignored and trying to still find feet after the closure of the coal mines, the business failed and my parents decided to close up and move away to…. Portsmouth.

I then went through school (more about this later!) for a bit before the family moved again and settled this time in the Midlands. Its where I am now, where I’ve set up camp, where I got married and had kids. Incidentally, the girl I got married to went to school with me in Portsmouth. Small world and that but it’s nice to see she took to me enough to follow me around the country and hunt me down after all these years…

Many of my family are still in Newcastle and the areas surrounding. I still return home a few times a year when work and such allows and I still get to (or used to when I could get tickets) to a good few matches. I filled the void with running a blog which was fairly big and still runs, albeit not by me.

However, it has never been viable getting a season ticket, a membership made do with ad-hoc games for myself, my wife and the lad. Suffice to say I wasn’t even close to applying for final tickets – as much as I’d love to be there, I know there are those more deserving than me.

This is where the circle completes because I’ll be watching, with my lad, who despite being absolutely Toon mental was born in Coventry. Do you know how hard it has been to keep his interest in NUFC when the majority of his mates support Liverpool / Manchester United / Chelsea and (weirdly) Tottenham?

Well, the fact is, it isn’t hard at all now. He didn’t quite get why I was so happy when the takeover happened, so I had to sit down and explain to him how transformative it could end up being, how now there is hope and aged 10, he’s at the start of a rollercoaster like I was.

You see, when I first started getting into football I was about 10 and it was about the time that Sir John Hall bought Newcastle, and we know what happened next, and subsequently what nearly happened. It was a hell of a rollercoaster for a young lad like me but it was my ties to the area combined with that era which dragged me in.

My lad, through my side, has family roots in Newcastle and the surrounding areas. He’s also 10 and at the start of a journey with the same sense of hope for the future that I had back then. Only perhaps this time he could see a trophy at the relative start of it.

This takeover, this run we’ve been on, has created an interest that wasn’t there with Ashley, it’s fun to be a Newcastle fan again and it has given legs to a new generation of Newcastle United fans on a wider scale and this will only continue.

I’ve promised my lad that if we win we’ll head up for the parade, home, where hopefully instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, my lad will instead be standing on my shoulders, serenading the players.

Howay the lads!

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