I don’t think that there has ever been a day in Newcastle like Saturday 29 March 2025. Maybe VE Day, maybe when The Chartists had 100,000 on the Town Moor, but the outpouring of joy from those there and the tears for those who didn’t live to see it resembled a liberation of our city more than a mere sporting victory. We’ve come second before, or lost the cup, and then still had a party where boozy defiance reigned along with a collective aspirational “just wait to see what happens when we win something” statement.
Well, we found out what that looks like on Saturday. Estimates of attendances in the city range from 300,000 to half a million people who were smiling, climbing every tree, wall, building and hugging, crying, chanting and cheering. We all saw it, especially me, as I had one of the best views in the city. I stood with one of wor flags, “big wavers”, on top of the corner Tyneside Irish Centre on Gallowgate, looking down at the tens of thousands and feeling very, very privileged and feeling the obligation to not let that black n white flag fall no matter what. My mam and dad were watching on the telly and we were thinking about her dad and her mam, my granny and my Uncle Colin and Michael and Big Ricker and Drax and all the others who died before they saw it. People had flown in, public transport was mobbed, the streets full with a black and white happy swaying horde and the Geordies had a party. It looked like liberation.
The day
My day had started well and became superlative. I’m tempted to repeat the tired old cliché that “If Carlsberg did Saturdays” mine could not have been better, but being able to get the No.1 Bus to the Central Station to drop my German cousin off, walk into the Grainger Market to get a proper “Mam” card for Mothers Day, then be invited by one of our best to The Fenwick’s Rooftops at SJP (It’s not in Fenwick’s and it’s not (quite) on the roof by our new standards) for food and drinks and a view of the League Cup was pretty special.
Then it got better. Having a laugh with Ant and Dec and Alan Shearer and Les Ferdinand and Shola Ameobi and Peter and Tina from NUFC hospitality and Simon and Darren from NUFC Executive Management and see our fellow NUFC Fans Foodbank collectors, Chi Onwurah, Bishop Helen Anne and Kim McGuinness as they held the flag and signed their names and Dec chatted about the old days in the Irish Centre when it was on Westmorland Road. Not because of their fame and achievements, but because we were all the same, especially on days like this, talking about their joy, the people who didn’t live to see and feeling the collective emotion crackle. Maybe they found something out; that maybe communal joy transcends individual achievement. I think it does and we should perhaps contemplate why only football can do this here.
The roof
Once I’d finished hobnobbing with the great and the good, my day got even better. I apologised and left the rarefied salon of privilege as I had a big job to do. Wor Flags had identified the Tyneside Irish Centre roof as a good location for a display as it stood there like a fortification next to the Town Wall and dominated the cityscape right next to where the team bus would drive down Gallowgate. More to the point my father, the Centre’s secretary had entrusted me with the task of making sure everything was safe up there and especially that no one damaged the roof that we just spent £20,000 re-surfacing. I got there in time to ensure that some of our most venerable members, Ivy, Maureen and George had seats next to the library window on the third floor and luckily found some old cheap binoculars that helped them identify Eddie Howe at 400 yards.
It’s different up on the roof. It is said that scaffolders and roofers are men you don’t argue with, because they feel the strength of wind and cope with all levels of physical adversity. Up there in the wind, the flags crackled as we held them upright and the one that I had which was a huge checked black and white monster showed up brilliantly as the occasional sunbeam hit it. I got up there about 3.15pm and the team bus came past about 4.45pm and I’m still knackered from hanging on. Some scaffolder I’d make! Luckily, my mate Keith is an internationally renowned Elizabeth Line designing, Lebetkin prize-winning architect and he showed me where to brace the base of the pole on the roof parapet and thus I was able to keep the thing steady with the aid of my friend and Godson Thom, and that was a good thing because I couldn’t contemplate putting it down. People, lots of them, were watching.
Flags and emblems can cause all the bother in the world but when it’s your flag, and it represents everyone, you hold it up, and so I did. I looked down from my position 60 feet up and felt the wind, felt the gaze of the multitudes and thought that nothing could get better than this and I wouldn’t have swapped position with anyone, not in the team bus, not on the Town Moor and not anywhere ever. Maybe we’ll be able to do it again and then we’ll get someone else – maybe we’ll raffle the position for the Foodbank? It would probably raise thousands. Anyway, the team bus came past and the players waved, Ant and Dec looked up, waved and took a picture and we waved back until we couldn’t see them anymore. Next door the Ethiopian and Eritrean Restaurant had their own rooftop display with three fellers holding Toon flags and they were rewarded with the jackpot as our own Alexander Isaak waved at them probably thinking about the country his father had to escape from to Sweden. Another man in Newcastle, thinking of his family and the journey we all came on to get here.
The Town Moor
Our own journey wasn’t over by a long shot so the Town Moor was next. A trip downstairs to the bar revealed that we were just about out of Madri and Guinness, but there was Staropramen enough to quench a thirst and thus fortified we went up the Great North Road. The weather wasn’t bad for Tyneside in March but cup wins normally take place in May when things, even at this latitude are a bit more benign. It was weird walking the route to The Hoppings without smelling candy floss on the breeze, then seeing the gigantic throng standing in front of a proper rock stage. The wind took some of the PA Systems power away but the sight of about 150,000 people stood in a field, but clad for winter, chanting along to a Brazilian swearing about an Italian who doesn’t like Sunderland was by then as commonplace as everything else. The Big Drone Show which had been created by club sponsors Sela put white lights cruising in formations to represent NUFC icons like Dan Burn, slogans like “The Mags are Massive” and the club crest above Jesmond which hopefully helps some of them there with their football and community education.
We may one day find out what happened to the two drones which fell out of the sky. Hopefully no one got hurt and nothing was damaged but I wonder about such things. Maybe there was a Sunderland fan with an air rifle hiding in an attic in Larkspur Terrace but every great day leaves you with a mystery or two.
Back to the Irish Centre
My own day ended up with a walk back to The Tyneside Irish Centre, I watched the turn, talked to the lads we’d got split up from, and met Norman who was as enthusiastic as a teenager still talking about the game he went to at Wembley, and the wild possibilities of a better future. Norman is a good bloke, a union man who has volunteered to help people all of his life. The people that I’ve mentioned in this article are good and decent individuals who prize their morality and do their best to help people. When Les Ferdinand coordinated QPR’s Grenfell Appeal match he called Alan Shearer who came down immediately and played to raise a few quid and do what he could.
Everyone else has helped people here and wherever they can in any way they could when possible and I know some of you. If you’ve persisted with this so far are thinking that I’m either an ignorant sap or a knowing accomplice of Saudi Arabia who has sold his soul for a tin pot and a decent team.
Have I been sportwashed?
Yeah right…I’m not saying that having my football team associated with Saudi Arabia, or any sovereign entity is good or even decent but find me a state or a billionaire that is. Ever since Britain subverted Ottoman Arabia with guerrilla warfare, and bribery and Kim Philby’s dad got involved with spying, oil, diplomacy, horse racing royal visits, aristocratic dalliances, Sandhurst and public schools nothing has changed apart from technology. Now though they’ve bought something that won’t change and that’s us, the fans because we’ll carry on being us. If anything changes it’ll be the Saudi people who’ll be influenced by their government and our fans generosity, welcome, equality and unity. If you don’t believe me come and stand on Strawberry Place for an hour before kick off and see for yourself.
Do you really think that if the Saudi State wished to buy a sportswashing football entity that it would have come here? No, it would have bought Man. Utd. or Barcelona, or Real Madrid or all of them, and then the media and lobbyists would have been much kinder. Instead you may allege that NUFC are the cunning means by which they convert world opinion to tolerance of their intolerance? Really? If it’s so easy then maybe there would have been a sinister competition between all the worlds bad ‘uns, the Russians, the Triads, drug cartels, North Korea and all of them who could just walk up Gallowgate, put their money down and because Bobby from Byker, Gary from Gateshead and Kev from Killingworth reckon you’re ok then CNN will start taking your calls? If that had been the fringe benefit of club ownership like a grace and favour apartment then we would have been sold for a lot more than £305mn. Chelsea cost £2.5 billion and everyone hates them!
The possibility that they bought Newcastle United because it had an unmatched community identity needing investment and better management combined with a property offering which offered capital security escapes the attention of people who don’t know the history of previous failed takeovers. The further possibility that a Saudi government sought a team that could help its stated ambitions to a reform process in conjunction with a need for economic diversification and sporting participation rather than obsessing about religion and politics may seem too obvious for this cynical world. However, when no one in the allegedly progressive media can even give this possibility the slightest credit, but then none of them knew about the Canadian takeover in 2016 either. The problem is that once you give a dog a bad name then it and some of our fans will live up to that reputation and engaging with anyone depends on trusting their sincerity and we live in a cynical world full of fake sincerity and faker outrage.
Hope
In October it’ll be four years since the takeover and we’ll maybe see evidence that we all crave in a few more, we hope. Not just trophies here, but an Arabic region that is peaceful and progressive. If Newcastle is a tiny part of that process I’m all for it and if I’m wrong and gullible then I suppose my poor silly feelings won’t be anywhere near the worst casualties. The last time we won a cup Britain was torturing people in Kenya, France was torturing Algerians in their own country and killing them in Paris. Events from long ago, but times can change and maybe for the better as I heard Lina Al-Hathloul say that we could support our team as long as we remembered her, her sister and the struggle. Anyway, we all hope that if you wait long enough and do the right things a proper universal liberation will come.
We saw what one looks like one on Saturday, and our tired old world needs many more and optimism, comradeship and keeping the ball in the corner when were ahead might get us to the victorious final whistle. Until then we remember our gigantic and glorious celebration that only football can bring to this city and even though we live in a cynical world, I have hope because I’m a romantic.
CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THE BYLINES NETWORK CROWDFUNDER!
