Articles
"I know how men in exile feed on dreams"
Aeschylus
When a magpie (of the feathered variety) flew over to the door of the English bar and stopped, looked inside briefly, then ambled leisurely off down the road rather than stay and watch, I should have realised it was all over. After all, these types of omens were quickly becoming commonplace.
Eight days earlier I had taken my seat at St. James Park with trepidation, unsure when I would next be able to do so again. I was leaving Newcastle, my home for 30 years and the city of my birth, to permanently relocate some 9629 miles away to Stockholm, Sweden for what Nobby Solano, bless him, once referred to as "family reasons".
The memory and elation of our survival boosting comeback against Middlesbrough and Hull's failure to seize the day in the intervening time left me full of hope that my last visit to St. James, for goodness knows how long, would, at the very least, be a fond farewell.
85 minutes later when the sky turned black and rain wept down uncontrollably, I realised this wasn't going to be the case. I trudged out of a miserable St. James, hoping against hope that something, anything could be taken in our final game against Villa, a game I would eventually end up watching from an English bar in Gothenburg, full of largely unsympathetic Man United fans.
I remember a survey from a few years back saying that Geordies are the most optimistic football fans in the country. I agree; it's the only explanation for why we endure the taunts of those Man United fans and why on the 24th of May we believed, against the evidence of our own eyes, that somehow, somewhere the ball would find its way into Villa's net and everything would work out ok in the end.
Of course, we know what actually happened.
I've been asked several times since by Swedes who find out I'm a Newcastle fan, who I will support now; as if in some way the club's relegation has rendered NUFC obsolete. "Newcastle", I reply, "I'll still support Newcastle". "Yes," they reply, not understanding "but who will you support in the Premiership?"
When I tell them I'm not interested in a Premiership without Newcastle I get equally blank looks. One chap even goes so far as to suggest, amiably and naively enough, that I could perhaps support that other team from the region...the one who play in Red and White...
He doesn't suggest it twice.
What people often don't get (and this applies equally to some fans in England) is that, although we share its moniker as a nickname, NUFC fans aren't like the magpie of the feathered variety that wandered off to do something else that day. We aren't like the players who can simply say "sorry", and walk away to a new megabucks deal with someone else. Neither are we in any way like our club's owner who can cut his losses (however considerable they might be) and bail out when the going gets too tough to take. For Tyneside and its exiled sons and daughters across the world, that isn't an option; THIS is our club, THIS is our city and so instead we stay with the team, even when were thousands of miles away, hoping against hope for a miracle that constantly seems to allude us.
To support Newcastle United is to do more than just pick a team that can be disposed like a discarded sweet wrapper when things turn bad. We don't pick the team, the team picks us. It picks us from the moment we're born, bombards us with black and white imagery, fills our head with the folklore of Jackie Milburn and Hughie Gallagher and drags us along in its insane mix of passion, excitement, agony and despair. It's a romance we carry inside of us wherever we go and, to quote one of its most famous sons, it is very simply "a love that burns...and will never fade".
It's why twenty five thousand people (including yours truly) have already stumped up for a new season ticket to watch a team with no manager, a rapidly departing playing staff and owners who have done nothing but treat them with contempt and distain from the moment they arrived.
It's why the Newcastle United Supporters Club now boasts ex-pats and exiles as members ranging over 35 different countries and why many of us, despite rarely getting the chance to get to St. James have made the huge investment to renew our season tickets anyway out of pure blind faith that somehow, someday, sometime soon we'll be able to reclaim our birthright from those who have taken it from us.
For an exiled Geordie, the frustration isn't the hard part. 50 years with no silverware builds a tolerance for that sort of thing. It's the feeling of isolation, the inability to release your pent up feelings over 90 minutes each weekend. The inability to go to St. James, stand outside and express in the simplest of terms that something isn't right here; that this isn't the way a club like NUFC should find itself.
Now that I find myself in this position; without a voice, impotent to do anything tangible about the problems that beset the club other than throw my money at it in the form of a season ticket I won't be able to use, I'm increasingly grateful for what we have in the emerging Newcastle United Supporters Trust.
The thought that, however far away I am from the team I love, however much those who would do it harm might conspire and connive to wreck our dreams, there is a group back home on Tyneside who cares, and more than that, who are prepared to stand up and do something, anything positive to change the situation we find ourselves in as a football club.
The dream of a fan owned stake in the club might once have seemed just that; a dream. But on a cold night in Sweden its one to warm this Geordie heart and I'm reminded once again of the words of that famous son of the region. At the close of the 2001/2002 season Sir Bobby Robson was asked about winning the league and spoke some very wise words. "It's not beyond our wildest dreams" he said "because we did have some very wild dreams"
We still do Bob... ...we still do.
Howay the dream.
