When you start supporting a football club, you don't support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history, you support it because you found yourself somewhere there; found a place where you belong.
Dennis Bergkamp
Those who know me may be surprised that it's taken nine months since I returned to live in the Northeast of England to offer a meander on what many believe is Newcastle's third cathedral and of the football team that calls it home. In Newcastle, we have St Nicholas' Church of England Cathedral, St Mary's Catholic Cathedral and the one of which I write, St James'. While the true cathedrals are both beautiful buildings, the latter dominates the skyline of the City of Newcastle—the home of Newcastle United Football Club.
I was back in St James' last weekend to watch some of the Sela Cup—a pre-season 'friendly' competition between Nice, Villarreal, Fiorentina and NUFC. As I watched the latter two teams play their game in the rain, my mind returned around a decade before to the last occasion they'd met pre-season. That game, again played in August, only lasted until halftime before its abandonment because of heavy rain waterlogging the pitch. Welcome to summer in the Northeast. Not sure what the lads from Florence made of it all.
On the way to the game, I fell into a conversation with a young father taking his six-year-old daughter to St James' for the first time. I sensed excitement and nervousness in the little girl decked out in her new black and white bobble hat, matching scarf, and a black and white spotted raincoat (yes, it was still summer in the Northeast). My conversation with her dad brought back memories of my first visit to St James' Park (more on that later) and inspired this piece.
Where NUFC's ground now stands was, until the later 1800s, a patch of sloping grazing land near the vast Town Moor, which I mentioned in a piece a few weeks ago. The stadium's name comes from the hospital and chapel of St James, built in the Middle Ages that once stood in that area.
The first game played at St James' Park was 1880 between Newcastle Rangers and a 'scratch' team of local professionals. So, in truth, the 'cathedral' to football predates St Nicholas's Cathedral, which only became such two years later with the granting of city status to Newcastle. Sadly, lost to history is the fate of Newcastle Rangers, formed specifically to encourage working-class people to play the then-new sport of Association Football. Yet their legacy lives on.
In his excellent book 'All with Smiling Faces', Paul Brown offers a well-researched and elegantly written early history of the team that became Newcastle United. It wasn't Newcastle Rangers. The team that became Newcastle United began life in 1881 as Stanley Football Club, named after Stanley Street, where many of the team's players lived, and who played their first game two miles to the east of St James' Park near an area of Newcastle called Byker that those fond of Ant and Dec might recognise. And those first players for Stanley FC were cricketers, not footballers. They only formed a football club to help keep themselves fit during winter.
Stanley FC kept their name for only a brief time. A year after they formed, they changed the name to 'East End' after hearing of the formation of another team in Newcastle's West End called, not surprisingly, 'West End'. Local rivalries were born early. West End also began to play their home games in St James' Park as Newcastle Rangers had given up the ground.
Over the next few years, East End prospered as a club moving from the less fashionable Byker area to play at a ground in the more upmarket Heaton that offered a better catchment area for spectators (the idea of football following the money is nothing new). And we begin to see games played between the two 'big' teams in Newcastle, East End and West End, drawing sizeable crowds. Records show that in 1886 a crowd of 2000 people gathered for a cup game between the two (East End won); it's thought the entrance fee would have been around sixpence at the time (equivalent to £1:50 today). Sixpence doesn't sound much, but one must remember that the average weekly working wage was around £1 (equivalent to £50 today).
By 1892 West End was in financial trouble, and the club disbanded, leaving East End as the predominant club in Newcastle. They then decided to take on the lease for St James’ Park. So, the myth that East End and West End merged to form Newcastle United is just that - a myth. At that point, there was no West End with which to merge. The problem for East End was that despite St James' being a better ground, it was quite a distance (in Victorian terms) for their east end fanbase to travel for games. The fear was that attendance would drop, especially as those fans who once followed West End would wish to avoid watching their east end rivals.
So, the East End Football Club committee decided to find a new name for the club, drawing up a brief list of three (obvious) names, Newcastle, Newcastle City and Newcastle United. The committee adopted the latter name by an overwhelming majority in December 1892. Reading about the name selection recalled Eric Blair's letter to Leonard Moore when Eric is thinking of assuming a pseudonym as seeing his real name in print "gave him an unpleasant feeling". When 'tramping', he'd used the name P. S. Burton, but in the letter, he considers three names: Kenneth Miles, George Orwell and rather fancifully H Lewis Allways. Eric adds that he is favouring George Orwell. These days we can't imagine any other name, and indeed, Nineteen Eighty-Four may not have the same weight coming from H Lewis Allways.
Anyway, back to football.
On their formation, East End played in blue shirts and white 'shorts' that would have been knickerbockers in the late 1800s. Back then, seeing a man's bare knees (along with a glimpse of a lady's ankle) would have been too shocking. Interestingly if you look at football programmes up to the 1950s, you often see the shorts of football teams still described as 'knickers'. Then along the way and for reasons lost to time, East End changed to playing in all red shirts. So, what prompted the change to the now familiar Black and White stripes?
Well, in the year of the name change, the club also joined the Football League, and many teams in that league already played in red shirts. So, a change in colours had to be made. But why black and white stripes?
One reason offered goes as far back as the English Civil War and the first Duke of Newcastle, whose crest was three white stags on a black background. Another offering comes from the 'Black Friars', the Dominicans whose robes are black and white and who had a large Friary in the centre of Newcastle. And should you visit Newcastle, the medieval building where those friars lived before Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries is now an excellent restaurant.
Yet another theory comes from the story of a pair of magpies that once nested on the roof of the then-main stand at St James' Park. That story also offers the club's nickname along with the shirt colour.
The actual reason is one of economics. Football kits were then, as they are now, expensive. In the past, whenever East End played away from home, and their red shirts clashed with that of the opposing team, they would borrow another team's strip. And that other team was Northumberland, who played in black and white stripes. So, there we have it, good old northern thrift. The newly formed Newcastle United Football Club adopted Northumberland's black and white and wore (people think) dark blue shorts. The colours of a magpie and hence the nickname soon followed.
So, OK, we've had the club's history, but why do I follow Newcastle? Well, it's not because of their years of unbridled success. The last thing of import they won was in 1969 (yes, I was there). Since then, they've got to a few Wembley finals. I've been to them all, bar last season, and I've seen them score only one goal, and yes, they lost them all. I didn't go to last season's final in the vain hope that my absence might change their luck. It didn't; they lost again. But next time …
They did come close to winning the Premiership about twenty years ago, amassing a ten-point lead at Christmas. Yet, they still managed to come second. As someone once said, NUFC always looks to take the scenic route to success.
So, what attracts me to following such a team to the extent that when I lived in southwest England, I'd take 500-mile round trips in a day to see them play (and, often, lose)?
I fell in love with playing football at age seven when I received my first (hand me down) football boots. They were vastly different from the lightweight boots worn today. These were of stiff brown leather with a reinforced toe cap and sides that covered my ankles and laces that wrapped around the bottom of the boot. As a 'small for his' age seven-year-old, I could hardly lift my leg while wearing them, never mind kicking a ball. And that ball was also not lightweight. We played with a 'Casey' that seemed better than a sponge absorbing water on a wet day.
Making up a Casey were long elliptical-shaped panels of leather stitched together; inside, a rubber bladder inflated using a bicycle pump gave the ball its 'round' shape. A Casey also had a thick set of laces that held the ball together over the bladder. If you headed the ball against those laces, blood would often flow; even if you didn't, especially if the ball were wet, you would see stars. Yet, despite these challenges, as a youngster, I couldn't imagine a time when I would not play football. That was until I severely damaged my right knee in my late thirties, and under the advice of the surgeon who operated on me, I've not kicked a ball in anger since.
Having fallen in love with playing the game, I saw my first live professional football game in 1966, aged ten. Back then, there wasn't much live football on TV. Even if there had been, my parents didn't have a TV. However, that was the year the World Cup came to England, meaning lots of live coverage. To watch the games meant decamping to my grandparents, who did have a TV. A TV with a screen the size of an iPad screen within a 'box' around the size of a domestic oven. You selected a channel (of which there were only two, BBC and ITV) by rotating a 'tuning' knob on the side of the TV. Watching the games meant peering at a fifty-shades of grey grainy picture. But watching those games hooked me, and I began to pester my father to take me to a 'real game.'
He finally relented, and off we went, not to St James' but, of all places, Roker Park, the then-home of Newcastle's bitter rivals Sunderland. That game, under floodlights, was Sunderland against Sheffield United in the League Cup. Within seconds of entering the ground, I was smitten. As the late Sir Bobby Robson was to write,
"What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It's not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It's the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It's a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father's hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love".
Well over fifty years ago, a small boy held his father's hand as they climbed up the steps into a stadium to watch an evening game together. The assault on his senses enraptured the boy. The ocean of green turf. The blinding incandescence of the floodlights. The intermingling aroma of tobacco smoke and cut grass. The gladiatorial emergence of the players. The throaty roar of thousands in encouragement and admonishment. The multitudinous explosive emotion of seeing their team score. I hope the little girl who held her father's hand on Saturday will one day look back and remember her first excitement. And who knows where seeing that first match might take her? Have I met a future star of NUFC's women's team?
But back to me, and now that both playing and watching football had captured my heart, on which side of the coin was my allegiance to fall? Sunderland or Newcastle? I am the product of a mixed marriage. My mother and her family were ardent Sunderland AFC supporters. However, my father and his family were avid followers of Newcastle United FC. In my early years, my parents (they were both engaging raconteurs) would regale me with stories of the teams and players they'd watched when younger. In my mother's case, it was the likes of Len Shackleton, Billy Bingham, and Stan Anderson. In my father's case, it was the likes of Hughie Gallacher, Tommy Lang, and Jackie Milburn.
As most sons are, I was close to my mother, and while that evening match at Roker Park had captured my heart for watching football, the black-and-white side drew me. I was to follow the Magpies, not the Black Cats. It may have been the anecdotes my father shared of his early days watching and then playing for Newcastle United's youth team that swung me his way. My mother's stories had appeal too, but my father's offerings took me inside the NUFC team of the 1920s. In contrast, my mother spoke only as watching as a spectator in the 1940s.
And so, a few months after that game in 1966, I went with my father to St James' Park for the first time. But again, it was not to see NUFC. This time it was the third replay of an FA Cup match between Middlesbrough and Hull City which in those days must take place on a neutral ground. It would be another few months until I saw Newcastle United run out against Leeds United. Newcastle lost that game but won my heart, and I can still recite the names of that team from memory.
The football ground I entered fifty-seven years ago has changed beyond all recognition. Unless you had a few bob and could afford a seat in the Upper Main Stand, it was standing room only. Now apart from a 'safe standing area' (from where I watched Saturday's game), everyone sits. There is now a covering throughout the stadium protecting all from the vagaries of Northeastern weather, contrasting my early days of watching when the rain or sometimes snow fell upon you unless you were in one of those privileged seats in the Main Stand.
A wide variety of food and drink is now on offer, and inside the Main Stand (now the Milburn Stand) is the Platinum Club, where you can enjoy a pre-game meal and drinks and even order the drink you wish to consume at halftime. Your tipple is there waiting for you as in the interval of a theatre performance. Again, this contrasts the limited sustenance at my early games of only a cup of Bovril and a 'twist' of roasted but unsalted peanuts. The latter was sold before the match by people walking around the pitch with a basket full of paper 'cones' closed with a twist at the top. For sixpence, passed (thrown) to the seller, they would pass (throw) the cone to you. It was remarkable how sixpences and peanuts always made their way to their destination no matter how far back in the stands the purchaser might be.
I mentioned earlier the aromas that attracted me back in the day, and in the winter months could be added that smell of Bovril and, if standing near the player's tunnel on winter days, the pungent smell of 'horse liniment' as my father called it, to keep the player's muscles a little warmer against the scythe of the east wind off the North Sea. These days it retails as the more attractive name of 'Deep Heat'.
As I conclude this piece, I want to mention Paul Brown's book again. Yes, its main thrust is on NUFC, but along the way, Brown offers a snapshot into Edwardian England and working people's lives. Football began as an amateur game played by gentlemen from public schools in Southern England. Brown's book reflects the early years of professional football that grew from working-class areas and those who dared to challenge that elite. Brown also reflects on the north/south divide of the late Victorian / Edwardian era and how the Geordie reputation for warm welcomes and bonhomie existed then, just as it does now. As expressed by a writer of the time that Brown quotes,
"And what finer race of people shall you find in other parts of this kingdom? They are the warmest-hearted people in the world, and of such a people and of such a town they have built among them, one cannot hear too much, nor feel too hearty and admiration."
Paul Brown's book is an excellent read for those who follow NUFC and anyone interested in the growth of "the beautiful game" and its social history.
And for the record, NUFC beat Fiorentina two - nil. Howay the Lads!!
Splendid stuff, Harry ... and a storming opening day win in the league! Your new Italian player looks quite the bargain. Howay, indeed!
This is wonderful, thank you, Harry, and reminds me of my own love affair with at least two sports teams here, including the Boston Celtics, about which I wrote last week.
The setting is key. The original Boston Garden and Yankee Stadium. They still gave my shivers. I'm going to find an article by Sports Illustrated writer Tom Verducci in which he writes an article about Yankee Stadium before it was taken down -- in the first person from the perspective of the stadium and all she had seen. I think you'll enjoy it. Thank you for sharing.