For March 22nd I'm going back 35 years to 1986 and a trip to the other St James' Park to watch Spurs take on Newcastle United in a First Division fixture.
I've always enjoyed going to Newcastle to watch football and it's a trip that I haven't made nearly enough times in my life. St James' Park is located more or less in the City centre and Newcastle is one of those one-club cities where you can be in no doubt as to who everyone supports. London, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham etc. all have the advantage of keen intra-City rivalries but I always feel that there's an intensity about the support for a club in a one-club city that makes it somehow different (Leeds United and Sunderland are similar).
In the ever-evolving world of football club nicknames Newcastle these days seem to be known as "the Toon" (after the Geordie pronunciation of the word "Town") by their own supporters (the "Toon Army"). At the time of this match I don't recall the term Toon being much in evidence and the club's original nickname of Magpies or "Mags" was certainly more to the fore (a reference to the club's black and white striped shirts). And the term Geordie? Well in truth, nobody's sure where that comes from although there are a number of theories.
I had made a point of trying to see a bit more of Newcastle when Kevin Keegan was playing for them in the twilight of his career. Keegan was a special player, worth travelling to watch. As a bonus, accompanying Keegan in that Newcastle side of the early 1980's were two future England players in Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle and the trio played some lovely attacking football together when gaining promotion from the Second Division. Keegan had retired at the end of the 1983/4 season however and Chris Waddle had since moved on to..... Tottenham. Programme cover star Beardsley (unkindly nicknamed Quasimodo by some fans) was to remain with United until 1987 before transferring to Liverpool in search of trophies. Waddle's place in the United side was taken by an eighteen year-old named Paul Gascoigne although it is not known what happened to him.
Peter Shreeve's Spurs had beaten United 5-1 back in September and were strongly fancied to win this game but only managed a 2-2 draw despite leading twice with a goal at the beginning of each half from Hoddle and then Waddle. Iaim McFaul's Newcastle drew level each time in front of a crowd of over 30,000 thanks to goals from (Big) Billy Whitehurst and full-back John Anderson. Also in Newcastle's side that day, and this is becoming a sad theme of these articles, was Glenn Roeder who died recently at the end of February aged 65. RIP Glenn.
CRB Match No. 427
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