involved) support the English national team. This borders on the ridiculous, as was seen when England last visited Norway for a friendly. The stadium was packed with 27.000 people in mostly Liverpool and Manure shirts, and in the first half when Gerrard hacked down a Norwegian player, a large part of the Norwegians around me actually booed when he was shown a yellow. Absolutely disgusting! There are many times being outnumbered as a Newcastle fan is a good thing. That was one of them. Why am I writing this? Who am I? I’m now almost 33 years old. I grew up in the north of Norway; most of my youth was spent in an archipelago called Lofoten. The total population of the six islands is less than half the capacity of St James Park (24.500). My home town/ village has a population of around 2000 people. It is small. The closest top-tier Norwegian team is Bodø Glimt. They are a costly 30-minute flight, or a 2-4 www.true-faith.co.uk
hour boat ride away. I only went a handful of times. But we played football. Lots of it. And talked about it. Through the game on TV on Saturday and the highlight show (Goal!), we were introduced to English football. I remember watching the games with my Dad, him asking me to keep it down a bit. I always thought this was because he was interested, but I later found out it was because the football helped him fall asleep. In other words, I did not get my football-bug from him. It took a while to settle on a team to support. I remember being “a fan” of Blackburn, Nottingham Forest, and Newcastle United. I even had a Tottenham sticker on my desk at school (cringe). This was aged 10 or 12. I remember thinking Leicester was a cool team because of the name of the stadium, Filbert Street. I remember being in awe of Matt Le Tissier at Southampton, and I really liked the yellow and green nets in the Norwich goals. And I remember Alan
Shearer! On every highlight show, I would wait for Blackburn to come on so I could see Shearer and/or Sutton score, and I would wait for the Newcastle highlights to watch Peter Beardsley, Keith Gillespie and Les Ferdinand etc. do their magic. But mostly Alan Shearer. The details are a bit foggy, but I remember thinking that I had to pick a team during the summer I turned 13, in 1996. Nottingham Forest didn’t last long, so it was down to Blackburn and Newcastle. Blackburn had won the league, but there was something about Newcastle United. I might remember it wrong, but I like to think it was before Shearer signed. And when I found out he did sign for us, that just made me even more certain.
I grew up in the north of Norway; most of my youth was spent in an archipelago called Lofoten. The total population of the six islands is less than half the capacity of St James Park 24.500
Now, I don’t really remember many games from those days, I just remember us being very good. I don’t think I remember much of, or paid much attention to, the fact we almost won the league tf 61