My Newcastle United heroes at centre-back | OneFootball

None of them were defenders, so I thought I’d comment on centre-backs this time.

I’m too young at 74 to have seen Frank Brennan, Jimmy Scoular and Joe Harvey play, so I’ll start with John McGrath.

He was the centre-half in the formidable half-back line, along with Stan Anderson and Jim Iley, who took us to promotion in the mid-sixties. John was a cultured centre-half who could dish out the physical stuff when needed, as Wyn Davies found to his cost while playing for Bolton at St James’ Park in our promotion clincher.

Speaking of Johns, one of the hardest men I’ve ever seen on a football pitch, was one of McGrath’s successors, John McNamee.

He was one of three excellent centre-backs we had at that time, along with Bob Moncur and Ollie Burton. Each of the three had their own differing qualities.

Moncur was tough, but his biggest quality was as a leader of men, captaining Scotland and of course, our last captain to lift a trophy for Newcastle United. Ollie Burton was an intelligent, classy defender but McNamee was a cult hero and tough as teak, who put fear into the hearts of opposition forwards.

We had several good centre-halves after that with honourable mentions going to Jeff Clarke and Peter Jackson but the next outstanding one, in my opinion, was “Killer” Kilcline. As his nickname suggests, he was a no-nonsense defender who took no prisoners.

McNamee and Kilcline were tough hard men but we have also had some extremely talented and skilful centre-backs.

Jonathan Woodgate was probably the best defender I have seen in a black-and-white shirt. Sadly, he was blighted by injury, a fact that cost us in a UEFA Cup semi-final against the formidable Didier Drogba. In Woodgate’s pocket for the first leg but unavailable because of injury as Drogba dominated the second leg. He took the Real Madrid shilling and departed for greater things but was hampered by further injury problems.

Then there was the one and only Philippe Albert.

So, so cultured and who can ever forget his sublime chipped goal in the thrashing of Manure?

In more recent times, Fabricio Coloccini for a couple of seasons looked classy. He also has the chant about him aimed at opposition defenders with long curly hair, “You’re just a s…. Coloccini.”

In the present team we have the nearest thing to Philippe Albert in Fabian Schar, a Dutch maestro in Sven Botman and of course our very own lad from Blyth, Big Dan Burn.

We Geordies are known for our love of number 9s but we have had some very lovable centre-backs in my time. My apologies to those I haven’t included in this article.