Do we deserve Newcastle United tickets? | OneFootball

That was bloody brilliant, wasn’t it?

In the greatest season of my lifetime, I used an array of legal and dodgy subscriptions to watch every minute of every match, mostly with my kids sharing the sofa, and it’s been fabulous.

But I only made it to four matches: two away and two at home.

I don’t have a season ticket, I can’t get a season ticket, and I struggle to earn loyalty points. As a result, I’m at the mercy of expensive ticket resale sites, or I end up sitting mute amongst the opposition fans.

Since the Saudi Arabia PIF led takeover, we’ve gone from giving tickets away to avoid empty seats on TV, to selling out every home match and there’s been a desperate scramble for Newcastle United tickets. This scramble has revealed the tiers of ‘real’ fandom and it’s left me wondering where my kids and I stand in this pecking order.

So do we deserve Newcastle United tickets? Let’s weigh things out.

Deep roots supporting Newcastle United

I was born and raised in Newcastle, spending my childhood in Jesmond, before the students took over, when it was a bearded, lefty, middle-class suburb of a solidly working-class city. I dragged muddy feet through Jesmond Dene to get to school in Heaton.

My family lived out this middle-class/working-class blend too: we were a middle-class family with working-class roots. My mum was a therapist and my dad a solicitor. He’d be on call through the night, summoned by pager to local police stations, where he’d represent the car ‘twoccers’ and Berghaus jacket ‘ram raiders’ who were doing their thing in 1980s Newcastle. My mum’s side of the family, where I spent most weekends, were as working class as they come, living in council bungalows in Stanley, County Durham. But I didn’t sound quite right. Rather than speaking with a Geordie accent, I spoke like a boy from Jesmond.

I left the city for good in 1995, to study in London, and I’ve spent the 30 years since then living in London, then Cambridge. I’m back in Newcastle four or five times each year, visiting the many family members I have in the city. We believe my great-grandfather was a Newcastle fan. He was born late in the 19th century, around the same time the club was formed, in 1892. My Grandad Joe, born in 1917 just as the Russian Revolution was starting, was certainly a Newcastle fan. His son, my Uncle Colin, and all of his family are Newcastle fans. Of course, I’m a Newcastle fan. Finally, I have two children, aged 12 and 10, both of whom are dedicated Newcastle fans. To put it another way, I’m the 4th generation and I’m bringing up a 5th consecutive generation of Newcastle United fans. This thing runs deep.

Taken to matches through the 1980s

We know Grandad Joe was a Newcastle fan because I went to many matches with him, my Uncle Colin Senior and my Cousin Colin Junior (yes, really), starting in the early 1980s. Grandad Joe was born in Stanley, County Durham. He served his country in the Royal Navy during the war and until the late 50s, before returning to Stanley for the rest of his days. I spent most of my Saturdays in Stanley with him, my Grandma, and my cousins, where we’d all listen to BBC Radio Newcastle commentating on Newcastle and the lesser local teams. When a goal went in they used a canned voice, shouting “it’s a goal!”, and you’d have a few seconds not knowing if this was excellent or bad news. I remember the name Charles Harrison as one of the commentators.

My Grandad would tell my cousin and I about the old days, like when Newcastle won the FA Cup three times in the 1950s, and how he’d drunk champagne from the lid of the FA Cup in 1951.

He’d name legendary players of the past: Jackie Milburn, the Robledo brothers, and his childhood hero, Hughie Gallacher, “the wee Scots lad, the best centre forward Newcastle ever had.”

Grandad Joe’s daughter, my mum, never much cared for the football. She’d tease me gently when Sunderland reached an FA Cup Final in 1992, saying it was “good for the region.” But her brother, my uncle, was a dedicated Newcastle fan, and he’d take us to home and away matches. My first match was against Barnsley in 1982, though whether it was the 1-0 win in March ‘82, or the 2-1 defeat in September ’82, is lost to the sands of time. What I know for certain is that we sat in the old West Stand, scored one goal, and everyone stood up when the chance was created, meaning I didn’t see the ball go in. From then we’d go to perhaps half of the home matches, and two or three away matches each season, my uncle driving us down the motorway at 50 mph, to unglamorous places like Rotherham and Sheffield.

If I missed a home match, I’d put the radio on in our backyard and hear the roar of a goal a beat before the commentary caught up. I was close enough to feel it, right in the chest. My football heroes were the obvious big names that excited for a brief moment before being sold on: Waddle, Beardsley and Gascoigne. A short Brazilian fella named Mirandinha came over from Brazil, scored at Liverpool, then got cold and left.

Issue 5 – March 1989

Matches felt dangerous and exciting. Home and opposition fans sang threatening songs, full of swearing, which still felt naughty to my young ears. These were the final years of hooligan culture, and the tension between the fans and police was palpable, even to my young mind. I had to ask my dad why “Harry Roberts is our friend.” We were all penned in behind cage barriers until the sense of danger was horrifically proven, when 97 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at Hillsborough.

In 1988 my school football team – West Jesmond Junior School – won our league, going through the entire season unbeaten. I played in goal, and fancied myself as the next Martin Thomas or (very briefly…) Dave Beasant. We were starstruck that they sent two Newcastle players to our assembly hall to present the league trophy. Did they send Gazza and Mira? John Anderson and Kenny Wharton? Nope. It was Paul Stephenson and Ian Bogie. Bless those two for doing that.

Buying my own tickets in the 1990s

Fast forward to 1991, when I was 13, and I’d taken on paper rounds, delivering The Journal in the morning and the Evening Chronicle after school. I inhaled every word written on the back pages of these papers, and the few quid I earned meant I could now buy my own tickets for the match. I’d go with my cousin, standing in “the scoreboard”, or “the corner”, which was rougher and more exciting as a result. In the last days of standing terraces there’d be surges that moved you 10 or 15 metres from where you’d started. Goals were celebrated with an intensity that’s lost today. We’d go to the odd away game too, sitting for endless hours on coaches, watching the likes of Micky Quinn and Gavin Peacock. We braved the scary trips to Sunderland’s Roker Park and saw the first “Liam O’Brien, over the wall.”

Around this time, my grandad passed away. My mother called the club switchboard, asking permission to scatter some of his ashes on the pitch at St James Park, and, incredibly, they said yes. One windy weekday morning, we were ushered through the Milburn entrance, to the pitch side, and asked to choose one of the goalmouths. My uncle did the deed, choosing the Leazes goal and spilling more of those grey ashes than any of us expected, sending us all scurrying upwind.

In 1992 I saw the legendary goal that David Kelly scored versus Portsmouth to keep us in the old second division, watching from behind the Gallowgate goal, just metres away, and it’s still my favourite ever Newcastle goal. For me, this is the emblematic goal of my childhood, and the final proof of my bona fides as a Newcastle fan. I know this club. I was there. I’m real.

Around this time, Sir John Hall had brought Kevin Keegan back to the club, and the modern history of the club began. I finally had the cash and independence to go to every home game, and started buying ‘half season tickets’.

Looking for tickets in exile

I turned 18 in 1995 and went down to London for university, becoming the exiled Newcastle fan that I still am today. On day one in my halls of residence, I had the emblematic conversation, repeated hundreds of times since:

“Where are you from?”

“Oh, Newcastle”

“You don’t sound like a Geordie. Where’s your accent?”

“I’m a Geordie. I spent my entire childhood in Newcastle. Not every Geordie talks like Gazza…”

In truth, I’d been having this conversation since primary school. Where was my accent? In a class-conscious city like Newcastle, what this really meant was: are you posh? Or, are you an outsider in your own city? In a strange way, it got easier to be a Newcastle fan once I’d moved South, and my accent was less likely to send coded messages about whether I fitted in.

So I haven’t actually lived in Newcastle since the mid-90s. I still have strong connections back to the city though: My parents live in Gosforth, and my three brothers all live in the city. My grandparents are long gone, but the passion for Newcastle that my Grandad ignited continues. That said, in the last two years of the grim Mike Ashley years, and with a pompous flourish, I decided to boycott the club (“Ashley gets nowt”).

I’ve also managed to infect both of our young kids with the NUFC bug, and have discovered the joy of sharing the sofa to watch matches, with kids that celebrate each goal as much as I do. I hadn’t realised how lonely my armchair support had become until it became a shared experience. My wife doesn’t care about football at all. But my kids’ excitement is right there on the surface, coinciding with Newcastle’s rebirth, and it’s been bloody wonderful to share the sofa with them when we demolished Spurs 6-1, when we sent PSG back to Paris with a spanking, and of course when we finally won some silverware.

So do we deserve Newcastle United tickets?

But these days it’s become very hard to get tickets for matches, whether home or away. This past season I took the kids to the Leicester and Arsenal away matches, and the home matches against Manchester United and Crystal Palace a few days later. Those Man United tickets were bought from a resale site, and cost a ridiculous £170 each, and so we won’t be repeating that too often.

The kids are both asking to go to more games, and I’d love to give them that. But how? And in a world where demand massively outstrips supply, where should we be in the queue?

Perhaps it’s easier to list the groups that might sensibly be ahead of us in the queue.

Season ticket holders – those committing a huge amount of time and money to the cause – should be ahead of us, and given the right to renew.

People that live in Newcastle should probably be ahead of us.

People that have gone to loads of away games and built up loyalty points should outrank us.

But the problem is that this is a list of “closed shops”. My kids and I want in. I’d give my right arm for three season tickets, and would gladly do the thousands of motorway miles that entails.

Perhaps we should start again at a new and much bigger stadium. I won’t rehearse the arguments for and against new stadiums, other than to say a huge amount is lost when a football club leaves home. They may well impose that on us, but I won’t actively support it. I want to get into a bigger St James Park.

And all of this is a problem. Young children must be able to get to matches if their fandom is to be nourished and embedded for the long-term. Armchair support has its limits. And I’ll remind you that my children are a 5th generation of Newcastle supporters, stretching back to the very formation of the club.

So here we are: a deserving case, but stuck at the back of a long queue of the more deserving. And if you’ve got any spare tickets, ideally three of them, I’m buying.