Onmeheedsun's Confession!

An affair of the heart and a confession!

This post is by long time blog member Onmeheedsun after I asked for Toon Tales during the international break.

With football as with affairs of the heart, you don’t always marry your first love.

It’s often influenced by time and place and your ability to appreciate what’s before you. NUFC was not my first love.

There were others that came before (well one to be precise) which I will try to explain. I’m not a catholic (although married to one), so this is as close as I’ll ever get to a confessional!

As a young lad growing up in Bishop Auckland in the early 70’s it was difficult to get to live football matches, and both my parents had no interest whatsoever in football. 

My close friends were Boro fans, and Ayresone Park was the first ground I watched live football at. We’d have been about 13, 1975. I think big Jack was manager.

But I never supported the Boro and only wore a scarf to avoid getting set on by the hardcore in the Holgate End! Scary moments going to matches in the 70’s.

But I loved the big crowds, the packed terraces and the noise. And the jeopardy of running into hard lads!

But my love of football started much earlier. I was 8 when the Mexico World Cup of 1970 was on.

We may have had a TV but if we did it was a B&W one. My friend next door had colour and this was the first WCup shown in colour. I remember watching  some of the games, and who couldn’t be seduced by the exotic strips and player names, none of whom any of us had heard of before.

I remember collecting the Esso token coins and filling a Panini sticker album. I also loved winding the car window down and filling my lungs with the smell of petrol whenever my dad filled up.  

The small pleasures in life for an 8 year old in the pre digital world! It was my first awakening to football. It was a while before I’d ever get to a live game so I studied the back pages in forensic detail, and kept scrap books of match reports and league tables.

But I still hadn’t picked a team. 

The first cup final I watched was 1971. It was the only live televised football except for England matches. Arsenal v Liverpool with Charlie George scoring the winner and then lying flat on his back with his long hair.

But neither of those teams did it for me.

The following year it was Leeds v Arsenal, with Alan Clarke scoring the winner, with Mick Jones going up to receive his medal with his dislocated shoulder strapped up.

I decided that Leeds would be my team. Luckily for me they were a top team and competed at the top for most of the 70’s. Why Leeds and not Arsenal or Liverpool the year before?

Perhaps that extra year in age makes a difference, who knows. At least it didn’t happen for me in 73 as I’d be a mackem now. That’s one large bullet dodged!

Attendance at live games was severely limited. My reluctant father took me and my brother to a Leeds match at Elland Road. I think I was about 14 so it would have been 1976.

The team up against Leeds that day. Newcastle United.

To my great disappointment that day the Toon won 2-0. I think Micky Burns scored both goals.

To rub salt into my wound I was accosted by some Geordie boot boys on the way back to the car park. Nothing too serious, just pushed to the ground whilst they tried to grab my Leeds scarf.

Little did I know then that I too would be bleeding B&W before too long and singing ‘we are the Geordie, the Geordie boot boys, we are mental we are mad, we are the loyalest…’

It was clearly a sign from above that Newcastle were destined to be my team.

But I continued to support Leeds for a further 7 years, up until I graduated from Sheffield Uni. They weren’t great years for Leeds, but neither were they for the Toon. I certainly have never regarded myself as a glory hunter.

It all changed for me when I went to live on Tyneside with my cousins during a year off after Uni. My cousin Robert used to go to matches on a regular basis, and I started going to SJP with him.

It was my first experience of attending matches of any team on a regular basis.

The year was 1983. The Toon were in the second division and it was Keegans second and final season at the club. This season was to be his last big push to get the Toon promoted.

Just after the season started I was working on a building site with my cousin, scraping putty off the windows of new houses, when a player who had just been signed turned up to view his ‘palace’. Well perhaps not a palace. It was 1983 after all, so no Darras Hall, just a Bellway 4 bed box!

The player turned out to be the greatest player I’ve seen live playing for the Toon. Peter Beardsley.

The frontline that season was Keegan, Waddle and Beardsley. Yes it was second division, but they played some sublime attacking football under Arthur Cox. 5-0, 4-0 some big scores against the likes of City and Derby.

When you watch live games at Newcastle you can’t help get sucked in by the passion of the fans, the febrile atmosphere, the terrace humour, the general fecking madness that is NUFC.

So I was hooked, and Leeds very quickly became an ex, but little did I know how much suffering I’d let myself in for. 40 years of it.

I went on to work and live in Newcastle for a further 8 years before work brought me south.

When you live in Newcastle the place and the people get to you. Architecturally it’s a beautiful city but back then there was still a great deal of heavy industry.

Not as pristinely clean as it is now, with shades of dark and light depending on which street you were walking down.

People had immense pride in their city and what it represented, were friendly and lived life on the edge. They had coped with decades of adversity, but always found a way of embracing any change forced upon them.

They were resilient and tough. They were more bothered about wearing the right clobber and going out at night than big mortgages.

Newcastle was a city full of life. And everyone, young, old, male, female would talk to you about their city and their football club. A truly unique place which never leaves you.

Home games were hard to get to living 300 miles away, especially in the 90’s when the Toon were riding high and SJP had a much smaller capacity than now.

But I've been lucky to have a season ticket for the past 25 years, except for a few Ashley protest seasons.

My love for this club of ours has never wavered, despite some of the darkest times, and I have never once cast a longing glance at my old flame, Leeds United. 

I would have loved to have been a Toon fan from a much earlier age, but it was not to be for me.

My Tyneside Grandad followed the team and went to all the finals in the 50’s. He ran a garage in Bensham and was friendly with Jackie Milburn. He used to get Jackie to deliver cars to his customers and slip him a few quid.

Unfortunately he died when I was 8 and so I missed the influence he would have had on my footballing loyalties.

So it was a more circuitous route for me but I got there in the end.

As I said at the beginning, it’s down to time and place, and for me that was 1983 at the age of 21 living on Tyneside.

So forgive me holy father, for I have sinned in having illicit relations with another many years ago.

Perhaps Magic Mac could advise on a suitable penance for my sin.

What a brilliant read! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Have YOU got a Toon tale to tell?

It's a long international break - so if you want to tall a tale about anything to do with NUFC just send the story to me at nufcblogcom@gmail.com

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