NEWCASTLE (AWAY)
Our Newcastle away preview is a little trip down memory lane, thanks to The Albion Mag’s Dan Tester. As you’re stuck on a rail replacement bus or sitting on a static train tomorrow night, on your way home from a gritty but uninspiring 0-0 draw, take solace from the fact that somebody somewhere is almost certainly having a much worse away day than you.
The 800 or so far hardy souls who ventured down to the south coast from Burnley recently got me thinking about some of my own arduous Albion trips. My mate has just signed up to one of those new apps that details your football watching career, gleefully pinging the user on the anniversary of a long-forgotten excursion to somewhere instantly forgettable, a very long time ago.
As luck would have it, as I struggled to think of my latest Dogma submission, I received a text from my aforementioned pal, to remind me of a rather ridiculous adventure we undertook as 17-year-olds in February 1991.
Albion were enjoying a fine campaign with Micky Small and John Byrne on fire up front, Dean Wilkins and Robert Codner running midfield, Clive Walker and Mark Barham tearing down the flanks and Paul McCarthy and Nicky Bissett defending Perry Digweed’s goal. And, of course, the football genius John Crumplin suppled the crosses from right back as local boy Ian Chapman swung them in from the left.
We’d recently lost at home in an FA Cup reply to the champions Liverpool and the stripes were flying, playing great football. Being young, enthusiastic and Albion obsessed meant Newcastle United away, on a Tuesday night, when you live in Hertfordshire, was the sort of challenge I lived for - at the time!
The Supporters’ Club coach set off from the Goldstone early on the Tuesday morning for the 343-mile journey to St James’ Park. We made a pit stop at Toddington services for light refreshments and, as you do when faced with a large expanse of flat concrete and a football in your bag, we had a kickabout.
At one point I crawled under our coach to retrieve the ball, before finishing the game, and we headed back up the motorway. However, our vehicle was suddenly surrounded by police on motorbikes and we were escorted off the road to another services. We were forcefully instructed to disembark and the entire lorry park was cleared: our little Brighton & Hove Buses coach stranded in the middle, all alone.
Three hours later and we carried on north, eventually arriving at the ground with ten minutes until the 7.30 kick off. What proceeded was a tediously dull ‘game’ of football where absolutely nothing happened. Nothing. The 200 odd (as in the amount, not a character assessment) Albion supporters in attendance were housed in a terraced corner, opposite the famous Gallowgate end.
There was no roof, and we endured a couple of hours of incessant ‘banter’ from the home fans. And it pissed it down from the minute we stepped of our little coach, until the ref blew up to end the agony.
As we are constantly told by the press, the Magpies are a ‘huge’ club, pulling in 50,000+ each week. On this fateful evening, the crowd was a pitiful 12,692.
We then had the pleasure of an eight-hour trip back south, in soaking wet clothes, arriving back at the Goldstone for 5.30am. I bedded down on a bench at Hove station for an hour and went straight to my job in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, and was promptly sent home for falling asleep at my drawing board (before computer-aided design).
From the moment we left the grip of the armed police at the service station, I feared my retrieval of the football from under the coach had caused the bomb scare. As it transpired, Chelsea fans on their way to Sheffield Wednesday thought it would be funny to phone the local constabulary saying someone had put a bomb on our coach. The ****s.
An appropriate end to a truly appalling thousand-mile round-trip experience.
Would I do it again - would I fuck!