Newcastle United Supporters Clubs – Introducing Hong Kong Newcastle United Supporters Club | OneFootball

Welcome to the latest addition to our new feature on Newcastle United Supporters Clubs.

This is now a regular feature and after Toon Army Chicago, Toon Army Minnesota and Toon Army Baltimore (Mobtoon Mags), we now welcome Hong Kong Newcastle United Supporters Club. Our thanks to Tammie and everybody else from Hong Kong Newcastle United Supporters Club.

We want to feature Newcastle United Supporters Clubs from all over the globe, whether in the UK or overseas.

If you help to run one of the Newcastle United Supporters Clubs and would like to see your club featured on The Mag in the future, please drop a quick email to contribute@themag.co.uk and we will send you the questions and other info, then once we get your replies we will schedule your NUFC Supporters Club to go up.

Name of your supporters club?

Hong Kong Newcastle United Supporters Club

How big an area do you cover, drawing fans from?

We cover Hong Kong only but we welcome all fans from anywhere to join our activities.

Year it was formed?

2020, it wasn’t the best time to start with the pandemic and the club’s situation at that time, a lot of work needed to be put in.

How/why did it get started and who were the main people responsible (tell us a bit about your / their background)?

The group started by me (Tammie Cheung), I was part of another NUFC supporters club several years back, perhaps everyone’s busy with their personal life and the results we were getting, the club seemed to lack the passion for commitment.

A few supporters I met along the way, Ashton So , Ivan Sum and a few volunteered, we shared similar beliefs and wanted to rebuild this supporters club, so I decided to part ways with the previous one and bring this supporters club back to life.

It was a very difficult time to start, but the fanbase were there, we tried as much as we can to let NUFC supporters in Hong Kong to feel our presence. We started by hosting a few zoom meetings during matchdays, cuz pubs weren’t opened during that time, writing short stories about NUFC to let supporters know we are here.

Later on we rejuvented the football team, and some charity duties etc, just to let supporters here in Hong Kong know there’s a bunch of us here for them.

How many people are part of your supporters club? Is it an official membership that people join?

If you count the numbers in Facebook, we have about 3k members, coming from different places around the world, but to be fair not all of them are active always. During matchdays we will write a preview to get supporters pumped up and discuss in Facebook.

We don’t run a membership system so there are no requirements to join our club. We welcome anyone to join us as long as long as they are Toon fans.

What is your presence online, do you have Twitter account, FaceBook, website, whatever?

We concentrate on our Facebook page, and a WhatsApp group, where we share news about NUFC, and some personal experience related to NUFC. We have an Instagram account and that shares our collections, football kits etc. I always looked into building a website, but it feels it’s not a “community” like Facebook, it’s more like a display of our collections of NUFC kits, or like a blog, hopefully the website will be ready soon.

Twitter – https://twitter.com/hknufc

If somebody lives in your area and wants to join up with you, how do they get in touch (or somebody who might be visiting your area)?

We actually get a lot of DM thru Facebook who looked to join our activities in Hong Kong, whether they are travelling for business or personal trips. A few expats who are currently staying in Hong Kong will join live matches and our football team. Ashton and I are in charge of our social media presence, so just drop us a message and we will get back to them.

A long way from Hong Kong to SJP for the Palace game, totally worth it

Tell us a bit about your people / membership, what kind of split is it of Geordies / ex-pats and locals, also any other way you would describe your people and the mix?

Our supporters club are local based, but I was surprised there are a number of expats enquiring about our supporters for any sort of activities, a few Geordies reside in Hong Kong as well.

Some of our friends are neutral football fans where they don’t follow any team, we try to persuade them to join / follow NUFC, telling them about the players and history etc. It became a lot easier these days really, these neutral football fans started to follow NUFC cuz they was played, some actually message us and wanted to learn more about this club, and became a fan of NUFC.

Do you have a regular meeting place to watch matches? If so, what’s it called, where is it and what kind of numbers turn up?

We have a pub which we share with another supporters club for live matches, it’s called Trafalgar at Wanchai, but currently we found a place at the Southside of Hong Kong, it’s like an office / warehouse for the supporters club. It’s not the best located pace in Hong Kong, but it’s our own place for NUFC. With a projector, we hosted a few Premier League games here and the latest the UCL game against Dortmund.

Toon fans showing up for the Cup Final game in Hong Kong

What are the very best and very worst UK kick-off times and what time are they in your area?

Hong Kong is currently 8 hours (1 hour less for Daylight Saving Time) ahead of the UK, so the best time would be an afternoon game UK time, any 3pm games or later would be late for us, simply say :

UK 12:30PM – 8:30 PM HK UK 3:00PM – 11:00 PM HK UK 5:30PM – 1:30 AM HK UK 8:00PM – 4:00 AM HK

Just a quick glance at the remaining fixtures, there’s only one game at 8:30pm, most of them after 10-11pm, and a few at 2:45am and 4:15am. It’s late but I’m sure lots of us will be staying up for it. A coffee would be a better choice rather than a beer.

Can’t expect much to show up for a 1:30am weekday game

Tell us about some of the big characters who are part of your supporters club?

Ashton plays a huge part of this supporters club, staying up after a 3am game writing post-match analysis isn’t something easy, he’s always so dedicated for this supporters club, it could be a mess if he’s not here to help me.

Ivan is always up for anything, showing up for live matches and football matches, basically anything related to the supporters club, he is here when you needed him.

A few volunteered along the way helped with any miscellaneous issues, arranging football matches, meetings with other supporters club for any activities etc.

Just wanna say we have a bunch of big characters here but I can’t name them all, after all this club isn’t just about the Admins, but everyone who are involved. Without the support, we won’t have the motivation to run this club.

Have there been group visits from your supporters club to Newcastle / England for matches?

A 15 hour flight to London then another 3 hour (train) / 1hour (flight) to Newcastle, this is the major concern about travelling to Newcastle from Hong Kong, but nothing stops our bunch of passionate supporters to be at St James Park.

Recently, one of our admins Tammie, along with a few supporters travelled to St. James Park to watch the Palace, Dortmund, Chelsea and the Man Utd game. Earlier this year, a few of us travelled to Wembley to watch the Cup Final, it wasn’t the result we hoped for, but I am sure we will be back soon.

Maybe the League Cup final in February? We are hoping to arrange some home and away games in the future, but you can’t find a single tickets these days, hopefully this can be sorted.

Here we are at Wembley, sure we will be back again!

What would be involved in travelling from where you are based to Newcastle Upon Tyne? How would you make the journey, how easy / difficult would it be, what kind of rough costs involved?

The fastest and easiest way would be a direct flight from Hong Kong International Airport to London Heathrow Airport, then an hour flight from Heathrow, or head out to King’s Cross and take a 3 hour train to Newcastle, that would be about 18-20 hours from Hong Kong to St. James Park. The only two airlines providing direct flights at this moment, say London Heathrow (also Manchester) are Cathay Pacific(£600-£1000) and British Airways(£500-£700), connecting would be a bit cheaper. From Heathrow, you can choose BA (£80-£200), straight to Newcastle, a bit pricy but saves you a lot of time.

To share a bit of my own experience, if I arrive early I will take the 7:20am flight to Newcastle, it’s £88 (varies from times) compare to LNER train (around £90), at least you don’t have to take Piccadilly line (1hr) or Heathrow Express to Paddington than to King’s Cross (45mins). That’s just my suggestion and depends how quickly you wanna arrive at Newcastle.

When it comes to people in your NUFC supporters club, which local football club(s) do they also support, if any. Or maybe supporting teams of other sports in your area?

Football is the most popular sports in Hong Kong. There’s the Hong Kong Premier League which began in 2014, Kitchee is the latest champions and the most crowned team (6 titles). A lot of them follow NBA, I followed NHL and my favourite team is Montreal Canadiens, but hockey is very rare here, quite difficult to find anyone to discuss about it.

How much does it mean to have Newcastle United visit your part of the world, even if just for the Soccer Sevens, or any previous visits by the first team (I can’t remember if they have previously visited Hong Kong)?

Soccer Sevens meant a lot to us here in Hong Kong, just thought when you support NUFC, you gotta support them from top to bottom. I remembered we were at Hong Kong Football Club, seeing Matty Longstaff playing and taking selfies together, few months later he scored the winner on his debut against Man Utd, that was incredible.

Earlier in May, we had a chance to meet the young lads in the Soccer Sevens tournament, and during the Chelsea game I witnessed Amadou Diallo and Michael Ndewini featuring in the Chelsea game, and James Huntley on the bench during the Champions League game against Paris.

Alan Shearer was the Ambassador for The Wallsend Boys Club, he was here three years in a row, and last year we had Sir Les Ferdinand. The last time NUFC first team squad visited Hong Kong was back in the summer of 2004, where Kitchee hosted NUFC, perhaps not much of a chance but we would love to see the first team coming over sometimes again.

Very lucky to be featured on the NUFC website, thanks to Luke Vinton

Talk us through the Mike Ashley years, how it affected your supporters club?

I think there’s nothing positive when you talk about Mike Ashley!

Well we had “some” good times but mostly bad ones, the club just completely ruined by him. Not much fans showed up for the games, we weren’t so excited on matchdays, it was terrible, especially during the Steve Bruce era, it took a lot of courage to wake up at 3-4am to watch a game with no tactics, a team doesn’t even try, we were so pessimistic about every match. I can say that was one of the worst times we had as a Toon fan.

I think the only “good” thing in the era is we can find tickets easily, that’s about it.

Tell us about when the takeover happened in October 2021, how did your club / members react, did you have a special celebration?

I remembered we weren’t so excited about the takeover news, cuz we heard so much about it and we know it’s not gonna happen. But the day before the announcement, it looked serious as every media is reporting it, we started to get nervous.

We needed to work the next day, but we stayed up, refreshing every website related to the takeover, discussing the possibilities in whatsapp / Facebook. When I woke up the next day, a lot of messages with Keith Downie’s announcement and this is it, it was done!

I was calm, I just can’t believe good things will actually happen to Newcastle United and to the supporters. I got so many messages from my friends, even from other supporters club congratulating on this takeover.

We didn’t have any sort of group celebration, but I did decorate my car with NUFC flags and drove around my home area, kinda odd but after 14 years of hell, I will do anything to celebrate.

What kind of impact (if any) has the takeover and these past couple of years had on the numbers of people and interest in your club?

More people showed up to the games, a lot of neutral supporters started to check out Newcastle United, it’s the energy and excitement that changed, the supporters are active again. Another impact would be the group orders we made regularly, prior to the takeover we get about 15-20 orders of NUFC kits, after the takeover, we have at least 50 kits ordered in every group order we made online.

Any amusing tales to tell of your meet ups, your members, your club’s trips to Newcastle for matches, or whatever?

We had lots, but allow me to be selfish on this one.

One day I was thinking, I have been supporting NUFC for 30 years, watching all the matches on TV, visited SJP a few times, collecting almost every kit since 1993, but how much of a fan I am?

When Martin Dubravka arrived, I was so much into him, he was somewhat unknown at that time, so I tried to google and wanna know more about him, but not much info could be found, so I had a wild thought on following his routes, visiting his previous clubs and know more about him through this way.

It was a difficult trip as I need to travel from Hong Kong to Zilina, Esbjerg, Liberec, Prague in few days, time was tight and ran into a few obstacles, but luckily Mr. John Gibson from the Chronicle gave me a hand by reporting my trip, overall it went smooth.

My last stop would be Benton, I planned to wait for Martin after training, just to let him know about my trip and show my support to him. It was Mr. Dan King, who knew about my trip, he arranged a quick meet up with Martin inside the reception at Benton. I was freaking nervous, it was freezing with the wind and rain, typical Newcastle weather, my hair was messy and everything, I was totally not ready for it. At the end we have a bit of a chat, this trip was exhausting and I remembered getting sick, but it ended on a high note so it was worth it.

Thanks to Dan King for linking me up with Martin Dubravka

Apart from possibly meeting up on match days, does your club get up to any other activities, how do you interact / keep in touch, whatever else you’d like to tell us about what your club / people get up to?

Besides gathering for live matches, our main activity would be football matches. We have a team competing in 7 and 11 aside, a supporters club league here in Hong Kong with teams like Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Munich, Liverpool etc, and even friendly matches for fans who just wanna come out for a sweat.

We also hold the Fantasy Premier League, where the winner and the top 10 receiving a specific prize. We also look to make donations to NU Foundation regularly, while we support NUFC, we always look to give back to the community as much as we can.

In your area, what is the level of interest in Newcastle United compared to other Premier League clubs, their local supporters clubs in your area etc?

Since I started the supporters club, I was surprised just how many Newcastle United supporters there are, and it’s definitely growing. Really ,we can’t compare with other PL clubs like Man Utd, Liverpool or Arsenal at the moment, but we have a very solid fanbase, I am sure we can outnumber them someday.

So to all Toon fans reading this from Hong Kong, or anyone around the world, drop us a message, we’d love to have a pint with you guys during matchdays!