A rough guide to what I'll be subbing to True Faith this week...
Fans far and wide seem caught in a mighty head-spin about whether they can stomach boycotting merch, let alone the match itself. It can work, though…
You might have seen that Southampton FC almost went to the wall in summer ’09. The mirage of Matt Le Tissier and some bongo consortium fell through and all seemed lost until Markus Liebherr rolled in with his swiss (chocolate) coins to save the club from liquidation. So what? What does this have to do with the mental asylum on Barrack Road? It’s that word which has caused a bit of a stir ever since Special K left; boycott. It began with an FA Cup match against Franchise FC (MK Dons, not Manyoo) on Jan 7 2005 when a small group, coordinated by Nick Illingsworth, refused to attend the match as a protest against the running of the club by one of football’s favourite deluded dickheads, Rupert Lowe.
Previously dismissed as a “vocal minority” by the board, the fans shouldered arms by going to watch Eastleigh instead. This was supposed to be a one off gesture, said Illingsworth; “it’s about time that [they] realised that the fans matter and we won’t keep turning up whatever. [They’ve] had a soft ride and we want to make it a little bit bumpier”. Sound like anyone in particular? Illingsworth is editor of Saints fanzine The Ugly Inside but didn’t receive unanimous backing, others wanted “to support the new manager and the players […] it’s up to others what they do”. Again, we’ve seen this before. Even with the home match against Bolton last season, when most hacks pointed out the dwindling numbers as emblematic of a demise in the fanbase, its much clearer now that a combination of Ashley, the ‘competitive’ nature of the PL and relegation have focussed minds that match-by-match is the way forward. Would Ashley stop acting the fool if there were only 35,000 in the stadium every week, with 5-10,000 of those not buying owt? The attendances this season have been eye-watering and a reason for all exiles (hurrah!) to puff their chests out when discussing the weekend’s events on a Monday morning but, when you look at the example set by these Saints fans, staying away could be something.
Of course, this argument devolves considering the stature of the club in the city and what it means. You don’t need me to tell you what the club is to people far and wide. People don’t want to give up the match. I wouldn’t. I don’t think, in all honesty, it’s a decision anyone who loves their club, regardless of which one it is (Franchise FC exempted), might take. If Ashley sticks around past the summer, would you entertain the idea of stumping up your hard-earned for, well, what? Where does it even go? When Southampton entered administration, Lowe tried to blame the misfortunes of the club on Barclays for ‘irresponsible lending’. Sounds about right in the economic climate in 2008; it also sounds like that shite last summer about Moat being unable to guarantee the overdraft against his purchase of the club. Michael Wilde ousted Rupert Lowe from Southampton in 2006 then welcomed him back with open arms. Who says Moat wouldn’t have done the same with the FCB? We know now that Moat is a crock of shit but at the time he almost got away with it; only his gaffes since the collapse of the sale have brought the chickens home to roost.
The financial troubles at Southampton were augmented by the boycott of around 5000 fans as things lurched from bad to worse to deep shit. A couple of colleagues boycotted and feared for the club, but ‘it was the only way to get the cancer out of the club’. Southampton Independent Supporter’s Association member, Richard Chorley, was evicted from the club AGM in December ’08 for launching thirty pieces of silver at Lowe and Wilde. Something for NUST to think about if they ever prise the keys to SJP out of the FCB’s sweaty mitts… Boycotting might seem like nonsense to some, nufc.com have said before that they won’t endorse anything they wouldn’t do themselves and fair play to them. The key to the message is that this sort of thing can work. Of course, administration is what almost took the club out of existence and allowed it to shed the numbskulls who had steered the ship on to the rocks but without the diminished crowds it would have only allowed the club and its taskmasters to tread water for even longer and to gorge the £24m owed to Norwich Union beyond any possible recoverable amount. The small scale (in stupid modern football terms) of the debt allowed Liebherr to guarantee the club’s future. What if they’d been £10m worse off?
A boycott might never become a reality but that doesn’t mean that you should rule it out, heavy heart or not.
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Sunday, 22 November 2009
History of a Boring Town
If the last one was somewhat obvious, then this shouldn't be too much of a surprise either. The second in the tedious series of my ten favourite albums of the decade is...
Arcade Fire - Funeral
"There's something wrong; in the heart of man."
Arcade Fire came out of nowhere. Funeral was released in the U.S. as 2004 was petering out and hit the UK in early 2005. They might not be the same band in 2009 (take Lenin from this year's Dark was the Night compilation for Red Hot) but their place in the musical landscape of this decade is assured.
The story behind Funeral is well-versed now. Named so because of the deaths of family members in the recording process, the record takes a long look at life, death and the altogether. How else do you end up with songs like Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)? A blissful look at relationships in towns: "And if my parents are crying, then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours." As Funeral moves up and down between emotional turbulence and excessive introspection, it climbs from wall to another, with sweet, pensive missives in Une Année Sans Lumière and Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) to the madness of Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). As the emotion starts to drag you down the pit, a burst of life breaks out from somewhere in this discord of instruments and sets you straight again.
The spiralling angst of Crown of Love and Wake Up remain the peak of the album and the band itself. A right kicking to death on several adverts hasn't diluted the potency of the latter, which remains the best song in an Arcade Fire live set. The chugging guitar motors through the song like a tug boat, people scream and wail for some unknown loss, summer disappears... A shout of discord; "I guess we'll just have to adjust!" Whereas Crown of Love wallows in guilt and self-pity before a controlled explosion of violin takes it off the meds, Wake Up bursts forth straight after, a release of pent up hurt and woe.
The Regine-led tracks seems to get a buffeting in some circles but they are a perfect back-end road block to separate Wake Up from Rebellion (Lies)'s rallying call, "sleepin' in is givin' in, so lift those heavy eyelids." Rebellion (Lies), as with Funeral on the whole, is so intense that it seems to pass in a flash, a spark. This is dispelled byIn The Backseat which moves from a tense build of strings and piano and becomes an absolute shitstorm of noise, akin to something from Björk's Post.
What should be a mess is a swirling love letter to the people and places that inspired it. Funeral sounds like nothing else and expels years of universal anguish in less than 45 minutes. There have been imitators since, but they'll never achieve that.
Arcade Fire - Funeral
"There's something wrong; in the heart of man."
Arcade Fire came out of nowhere. Funeral was released in the U.S. as 2004 was petering out and hit the UK in early 2005. They might not be the same band in 2009 (take Lenin from this year's Dark was the Night compilation for Red Hot) but their place in the musical landscape of this decade is assured.
The story behind Funeral is well-versed now. Named so because of the deaths of family members in the recording process, the record takes a long look at life, death and the altogether. How else do you end up with songs like Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)? A blissful look at relationships in towns: "And if my parents are crying, then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours." As Funeral moves up and down between emotional turbulence and excessive introspection, it climbs from wall to another, with sweet, pensive missives in Une Année Sans Lumière and Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) to the madness of Neighborhood #3 (Power Out). As the emotion starts to drag you down the pit, a burst of life breaks out from somewhere in this discord of instruments and sets you straight again.
The spiralling angst of Crown of Love and Wake Up remain the peak of the album and the band itself. A right kicking to death on several adverts hasn't diluted the potency of the latter, which remains the best song in an Arcade Fire live set. The chugging guitar motors through the song like a tug boat, people scream and wail for some unknown loss, summer disappears... A shout of discord; "I guess we'll just have to adjust!" Whereas Crown of Love wallows in guilt and self-pity before a controlled explosion of violin takes it off the meds, Wake Up bursts forth straight after, a release of pent up hurt and woe.
The Regine-led tracks seems to get a buffeting in some circles but they are a perfect back-end road block to separate Wake Up from Rebellion (Lies)'s rallying call, "sleepin' in is givin' in, so lift those heavy eyelids." Rebellion (Lies), as with Funeral on the whole, is so intense that it seems to pass in a flash, a spark. This is dispelled byIn The Backseat which moves from a tense build of strings and piano and becomes an absolute shitstorm of noise, akin to something from Björk's Post.
What should be a mess is a swirling love letter to the people and places that inspired it. Funeral sounds like nothing else and expels years of universal anguish in less than 45 minutes. There have been imitators since, but they'll never achieve that.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Brink of the Clouds
With the end of the decade approaching, its about time to evaluate what has made it exciting. Ten records for ten years, not that this means every year will be represented, necessarily. The term best has been precluded by favourite as that makes it a bit more subjective. Which is nice. So, onwards and upwards, in no particular order. To start us off, an under-appreciated gem...
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Not a surprise. The second best rock album of the decade saw Eddie Vedder and the crew at the peak of their powers with an album that distils all of the band's influences to create something that wouldn't be out of place in the back catalogues of Pink Floyd or The Who. Sleight of Hand is a brooding, sonic masterpiece that ebbs and flows like cross-town traffic, culminating in a crescendo of Vedder's cracked vocal and wailing guitars; it sounds like it could knock down buildings. Breakerfall is over before its even begun, a smash'n'grab track, swirling by in a cluster of charged aggression and pinpoint noise.
"When we looked up the word 'binaural,' it meant to listen with both ears. So it seemed like a fitting title for the album" / Stone Gossard
Binaural sees Gossard produce some of his best work on a Pearl Jam album, in terms of feelings as well as riffs. Gossard creates polar opposites in Thin Air and Rival; as Thin Air explores the emotional release of being in love, Rival is Gossard reflecting, an attempt to understand the mindset of a killer and those they touch, on the barren aftermath of the Columbine massacre.
While the naysayers would point to tracks such as Gods' Dice or Evacuation as a sign of the album's inconsistency, it is worth understanding the fragility of the band in the face of uncertainty and change, something which is approached in both Light Years and Nothing as It Seems. While Gods' Dice is by no means Jeff Ament's key contribution to Pearl Jam's history (that would be Nothing As It Seems), the swirling mess it became is emblematic of a band cutting loose and playing their full hand.
"There is a lot of music out there that is very easy to digest but we never wanted to be part of it" / Eddie Vedder
This is not to say that the album didn't suffer a troubled genesis. Jack Irons' departure saw Pearl Jam recruit their fourth drummer in six albums, former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, whilst lead guitarist Mike McCready went into rehab for an addiction to prescription drugs. To top it all off, Vedder had the music for the songs that would become Insignificance and Grievance, but no lyrics. Nothing was forthcoming. Vedder swore himself off the guitar, then he set eyes on a ukelele...
Soon Forget would be forgotten, sandwiched as it is between Sleight of Hand and the focussed, destructive distortion of Parting Ways, but for its innocent uke jangle, Soon Forget is betrayed by a darker set of lyrics as Vedder waves goodbye to a man of destitute greed. He holds wealth, but he is a man without purpose, truly insignificant.
At the prompting of producer Tchad Blake (Binaural was the first Pearl Jam album not produced by Brendan O'Brien), the album focusses wholeheartedly on moods and feelings, whether those are the highest highs (Thin Air) or the crushing lows (Light Years, Parting Ways). Indeed, the mood of fan favourite Sad (originally called Letter to the Dead) was deemed too "pop" by the band, according to Ament, and was cut, as was the Blake-endorsed Fatal. Although both of these tracks would get the eventual release they deserved on Lost Dogs, its difficult to see how the album could have been considered poorer for the inclusion of these songs. A straight swap with Gods' Dice and Evacuation would see little argument about which is Pearl Jam's best studio album - Binaural by a knockout.
Binaural's original tracklisting:
01 Breakerfall
02 Insignificance
03 Evacuation
04 Letter to the Dead (Later renamed Sad)
05 Rival *
06 Grievance
07 Light Years
08 Of the Girl *
09 Thin Air
10 Nothing as It Seems *
11 Fatal
12 Sleight of Hand *
13 Soon Forget *
14 In the Moonlight
15 Parting Ways
16 Education
* indicates use of binaural recording
The pressed album certainly flows better, but whether this is due to familiarity is not so clear. At sixteen tracks, however, a cull was inevitable, as 2002's Riot Act feels bloated at fifteen; as above, whether the right tracks remained in place is an issue of personal preference, but the album's quality remains undiminished. The Guardian's dismissal of the album's "duds" in its 2000 review could well include tracks like Grievance and Rival, but the anger and emotion that is prevalent in the tracks lifts them high above Gods' Dice or Evacuation; as Vedder wails on Grievance, "you don't give blood, then take it back again. We're all deserving something more".
"Because Mike wasn't all there, and there was a 'get-to-know-you' thing with Matt, everyone wasn't on the same page" / Stone Gossard
The evolution of Pearl Jam has continued because of their embrace of the past and a burning hope for a better future and this is apparent in the use of binaural recording techniques on some of the songs, one of the most successful of which is the Gossard-penned Of the Girl. A love story brimming with sweeping guitars that sound like trains edging away from a station platform, a juddering, bluesy mid-section sees the occasional jams of a Pearl Jam live show brought into the studio. Small tremblings of guitar not dissimilar to Jimi Hendrix echo all over the backdrop; like finding buried treasure. Of The Girl is full of mystery, even after the seven or so years that I've been listening to Binaural, I've never truly gotten to the bottom of the track, never completely discerned just what it is that creates such an air of abstract detachment that draws you in completely, not unlike the album itself.
"The reason that we went with Tchad Blake is because he provides an amazing atmosphere to songs.... So, I think we wanted the artwork to represent that" / Jeff Ament
The emptiness of giant spaces and the feeling of being a miniscule something within them prompted the use of photographs from NASA's Hubble Telescope for the album's cover, inserts and liner notes. Examining these with a soundtrack of Nothing As It Seems creates a dense, crushing feeling that Pearl Jam never captured before or since, encapsulated by Vedder's mutter, "a scratching voice all alone, its nothing like your baritone".
Ultimately, as highlighted by the selection below, Binaural is about a band examining a new direction, and although Pearl Jam didn't reinvent themselves to the extent that Radiohead did with Kid A, the progression from Yield, a balls-out rock'n'roll album, to an introspective work full of elongated tracks and spacial arrangements (the beautiful juxtaposition of April Cameron's viola and Justine Foy's cello against the guitars on Parting Ways) helped Pearl Jam to create their most atmospheric work.
A fractured, aching masterpiece.
The true meaning of Light Years
Pearl Jam - Binaural
Not a surprise. The second best rock album of the decade saw Eddie Vedder and the crew at the peak of their powers with an album that distils all of the band's influences to create something that wouldn't be out of place in the back catalogues of Pink Floyd or The Who. Sleight of Hand is a brooding, sonic masterpiece that ebbs and flows like cross-town traffic, culminating in a crescendo of Vedder's cracked vocal and wailing guitars; it sounds like it could knock down buildings. Breakerfall is over before its even begun, a smash'n'grab track, swirling by in a cluster of charged aggression and pinpoint noise.
"When we looked up the word 'binaural,' it meant to listen with both ears. So it seemed like a fitting title for the album" / Stone Gossard
Binaural sees Gossard produce some of his best work on a Pearl Jam album, in terms of feelings as well as riffs. Gossard creates polar opposites in Thin Air and Rival; as Thin Air explores the emotional release of being in love, Rival is Gossard reflecting, an attempt to understand the mindset of a killer and those they touch, on the barren aftermath of the Columbine massacre.
While the naysayers would point to tracks such as Gods' Dice or Evacuation as a sign of the album's inconsistency, it is worth understanding the fragility of the band in the face of uncertainty and change, something which is approached in both Light Years and Nothing as It Seems. While Gods' Dice is by no means Jeff Ament's key contribution to Pearl Jam's history (that would be Nothing As It Seems), the swirling mess it became is emblematic of a band cutting loose and playing their full hand.
"There is a lot of music out there that is very easy to digest but we never wanted to be part of it" / Eddie Vedder
This is not to say that the album didn't suffer a troubled genesis. Jack Irons' departure saw Pearl Jam recruit their fourth drummer in six albums, former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, whilst lead guitarist Mike McCready went into rehab for an addiction to prescription drugs. To top it all off, Vedder had the music for the songs that would become Insignificance and Grievance, but no lyrics. Nothing was forthcoming. Vedder swore himself off the guitar, then he set eyes on a ukelele...
Soon Forget would be forgotten, sandwiched as it is between Sleight of Hand and the focussed, destructive distortion of Parting Ways, but for its innocent uke jangle, Soon Forget is betrayed by a darker set of lyrics as Vedder waves goodbye to a man of destitute greed. He holds wealth, but he is a man without purpose, truly insignificant.
At the prompting of producer Tchad Blake (Binaural was the first Pearl Jam album not produced by Brendan O'Brien), the album focusses wholeheartedly on moods and feelings, whether those are the highest highs (Thin Air) or the crushing lows (Light Years, Parting Ways). Indeed, the mood of fan favourite Sad (originally called Letter to the Dead) was deemed too "pop" by the band, according to Ament, and was cut, as was the Blake-endorsed Fatal. Although both of these tracks would get the eventual release they deserved on Lost Dogs, its difficult to see how the album could have been considered poorer for the inclusion of these songs. A straight swap with Gods' Dice and Evacuation would see little argument about which is Pearl Jam's best studio album - Binaural by a knockout.
Binaural's original tracklisting:
01 Breakerfall
02 Insignificance
03 Evacuation
04 Letter to the Dead (Later renamed Sad)
05 Rival *
06 Grievance
07 Light Years
08 Of the Girl *
09 Thin Air
10 Nothing as It Seems *
11 Fatal
12 Sleight of Hand *
13 Soon Forget *
14 In the Moonlight
15 Parting Ways
16 Education
* indicates use of binaural recording
The pressed album certainly flows better, but whether this is due to familiarity is not so clear. At sixteen tracks, however, a cull was inevitable, as 2002's Riot Act feels bloated at fifteen; as above, whether the right tracks remained in place is an issue of personal preference, but the album's quality remains undiminished. The Guardian's dismissal of the album's "duds" in its 2000 review could well include tracks like Grievance and Rival, but the anger and emotion that is prevalent in the tracks lifts them high above Gods' Dice or Evacuation; as Vedder wails on Grievance, "you don't give blood, then take it back again. We're all deserving something more".
"Because Mike wasn't all there, and there was a 'get-to-know-you' thing with Matt, everyone wasn't on the same page" / Stone Gossard
The evolution of Pearl Jam has continued because of their embrace of the past and a burning hope for a better future and this is apparent in the use of binaural recording techniques on some of the songs, one of the most successful of which is the Gossard-penned Of the Girl. A love story brimming with sweeping guitars that sound like trains edging away from a station platform, a juddering, bluesy mid-section sees the occasional jams of a Pearl Jam live show brought into the studio. Small tremblings of guitar not dissimilar to Jimi Hendrix echo all over the backdrop; like finding buried treasure. Of The Girl is full of mystery, even after the seven or so years that I've been listening to Binaural, I've never truly gotten to the bottom of the track, never completely discerned just what it is that creates such an air of abstract detachment that draws you in completely, not unlike the album itself.
"The reason that we went with Tchad Blake is because he provides an amazing atmosphere to songs.... So, I think we wanted the artwork to represent that" / Jeff Ament
The emptiness of giant spaces and the feeling of being a miniscule something within them prompted the use of photographs from NASA's Hubble Telescope for the album's cover, inserts and liner notes. Examining these with a soundtrack of Nothing As It Seems creates a dense, crushing feeling that Pearl Jam never captured before or since, encapsulated by Vedder's mutter, "a scratching voice all alone, its nothing like your baritone".
Ultimately, as highlighted by the selection below, Binaural is about a band examining a new direction, and although Pearl Jam didn't reinvent themselves to the extent that Radiohead did with Kid A, the progression from Yield, a balls-out rock'n'roll album, to an introspective work full of elongated tracks and spacial arrangements (the beautiful juxtaposition of April Cameron's viola and Justine Foy's cello against the guitars on Parting Ways) helped Pearl Jam to create their most atmospheric work.
A fractured, aching masterpiece.
The true meaning of Light Years
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Stuck Between Stations
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Supporter
An extortionate public transport system provides cheap fares that run out before match tickets go on sale while the suits make it even harder to support the club. To call it difficult being a long-distance fan is sad and self-indulgent. It is just different. It makes seeing matches difficult, my last being Lillestrom at home (with the chap next to me berating Stephen Carr for 90 minutes…) and the last before that was the 3-3 draw at Southampton. Even then I had to sit in the Southampton end, right next to the Newcastle fans; I must have been the only person sat down when Kevin Phillips came on.
Isolation breeds contempt, which creates solidarity. My best friend supports Leeds United and I yearn for the days we play them again, those games mattered, what does Wigan away even mean? Crap football, crap fans, crap town. Another good friend is from Norwich and I went with him to Carrow Road for the Birmingham match, Kevin Phillips joined us and I revelled in the fact 20,000 others were willing him to fail. The trouble with the SKY generation, of which I am a paid-up member, is that while it has seen an improvement in the quality of player on show it has created the ‘hybrid’ football fan who has too much time on their hands and foams at the mouth as they hammer at keyboards and text the ‘cracking banter’ brigade on the BBC website’s Live Text.
These morons encircle local boozers when you just want to keep your head down during the Chelsea home match as every taxi driver in Canterbury sneers at your back that Damien Duff knows which side his bread is buttered on. The press frustrate with their clamouring ridicule but it is nothing compared to hearing these ‘opinions’ filter through the masses. They can’t string together a semblance of an argument, during the 4-1 Villa defeat last season I was distracted from the match by a volley of questions about Dennis Wise and his legions of orcs. Wearing the shirt south of Washington seems to encourage these people and their unrepentant missive of bile and ignorance.
I have no love for southern football fans, whenever I visit Portsmouth I am aware of it teeming with wannabe east-enders, the same people who tormented my youth with accusatory questions at birthday parties and tea-time visits as my non-support for Southampton, Chelsea or Manchester United became a sticking point for friends and parents alike. Darren Peacock is swift to point out that the 95/96 defence weren’t rubbish but this didn’t stop the Spanish inquisition at school (again, from Southampton fans). Despite my dad being a Geordie supporting the club has always been an intense, personal, affair, whether it is my first live match, of which I remember nothing bar the chap behind me apologising to my dad at half-time for swearing too much, or Ian Woan, the shot of doom and my subsequent tantrum. I am still ashamed to this day that my reaction upon arriving home from the pub was to hurl my shirt on the ground then kick and spit on it. My mother, appalled, said I wasn’t going to watch football any more if this is how I behaved. I am the same now, minus the delinquency.
The decline of the last few years has seen a strange coincidence with my first real forays into the club’s history. I had ridden on my blood ties to the club for too long and realised there was more to Newcastle United than Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan and the Champions League. Not growing up in the area has made me question whether I deserve the club in the past, I sulked after losing 3-0 to West Ham but what did the club owe me, what had I invested in it? When I was growing up there were only one or two other Newcastle fans at school, hangers on from the Keegan years who soon tailed off with Dalglish and Gullit, claiming they weren’t interested anymore.
It is difficult to decide whether supporting Newcastle United has made me better or bitter. My Alan Shearer poster reminded me of my responsibilities as a boy and Mike Ashley reinforces them within me now. The apathy that this regime has created hasn’t taken hold of me (although I no longer expect wins against teams with smaller grounds than ours), desire to own the purple shirt dissipates and I am happy to buy tickets and nothing else. Sticking with the club whilst people posture how many years since Newcastle won the league?, you lot think you’re a big club, makes abandoning it now seem a churlish idea. I’ve taken on southern football fans for years, I can take on Mike Ashley. They’re all bottlers anyway.
An extortionate public transport system provides cheap fares that run out before match tickets go on sale while the suits make it even harder to support the club. To call it difficult being a long-distance fan is sad and self-indulgent. It is just different. It makes seeing matches difficult, my last being Lillestrom at home (with the chap next to me berating Stephen Carr for 90 minutes…) and the last before that was the 3-3 draw at Southampton. Even then I had to sit in the Southampton end, right next to the Newcastle fans; I must have been the only person sat down when Kevin Phillips came on.
Isolation breeds contempt, which creates solidarity. My best friend supports Leeds United and I yearn for the days we play them again, those games mattered, what does Wigan away even mean? Crap football, crap fans, crap town. Another good friend is from Norwich and I went with him to Carrow Road for the Birmingham match, Kevin Phillips joined us and I revelled in the fact 20,000 others were willing him to fail. The trouble with the SKY generation, of which I am a paid-up member, is that while it has seen an improvement in the quality of player on show it has created the ‘hybrid’ football fan who has too much time on their hands and foams at the mouth as they hammer at keyboards and text the ‘cracking banter’ brigade on the BBC website’s Live Text.
These morons encircle local boozers when you just want to keep your head down during the Chelsea home match as every taxi driver in Canterbury sneers at your back that Damien Duff knows which side his bread is buttered on. The press frustrate with their clamouring ridicule but it is nothing compared to hearing these ‘opinions’ filter through the masses. They can’t string together a semblance of an argument, during the 4-1 Villa defeat last season I was distracted from the match by a volley of questions about Dennis Wise and his legions of orcs. Wearing the shirt south of Washington seems to encourage these people and their unrepentant missive of bile and ignorance.
I have no love for southern football fans, whenever I visit Portsmouth I am aware of it teeming with wannabe east-enders, the same people who tormented my youth with accusatory questions at birthday parties and tea-time visits as my non-support for Southampton, Chelsea or Manchester United became a sticking point for friends and parents alike. Darren Peacock is swift to point out that the 95/96 defence weren’t rubbish but this didn’t stop the Spanish inquisition at school (again, from Southampton fans). Despite my dad being a Geordie supporting the club has always been an intense, personal, affair, whether it is my first live match, of which I remember nothing bar the chap behind me apologising to my dad at half-time for swearing too much, or Ian Woan, the shot of doom and my subsequent tantrum. I am still ashamed to this day that my reaction upon arriving home from the pub was to hurl my shirt on the ground then kick and spit on it. My mother, appalled, said I wasn’t going to watch football any more if this is how I behaved. I am the same now, minus the delinquency.
The decline of the last few years has seen a strange coincidence with my first real forays into the club’s history. I had ridden on my blood ties to the club for too long and realised there was more to Newcastle United than Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan and the Champions League. Not growing up in the area has made me question whether I deserve the club in the past, I sulked after losing 3-0 to West Ham but what did the club owe me, what had I invested in it? When I was growing up there were only one or two other Newcastle fans at school, hangers on from the Keegan years who soon tailed off with Dalglish and Gullit, claiming they weren’t interested anymore.
It is difficult to decide whether supporting Newcastle United has made me better or bitter. My Alan Shearer poster reminded me of my responsibilities as a boy and Mike Ashley reinforces them within me now. The apathy that this regime has created hasn’t taken hold of me (although I no longer expect wins against teams with smaller grounds than ours), desire to own the purple shirt dissipates and I am happy to buy tickets and nothing else. Sticking with the club whilst people posture how many years since Newcastle won the league?, you lot think you’re a big club, makes abandoning it now seem a churlish idea. I’ve taken on southern football fans for years, I can take on Mike Ashley. They’re all bottlers anyway.
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