What motivates our interest and preoccupation with football and Newcastle in particular? Are our feelings and concern for our football club any different to supporters of other clubs? Why do I feel motivated to read everything I can in relation to spurious news about the club at every opportunity? Why at this time of the season is an erstwhile thoughtful family man, so consumed and excited by the end of the phoney war of pre-season and the start of a new campaign? How has this football worm managed to lodge itself in my brain stirring up emotions over which I have so little control?
DUNCAN DAVIES
I AM A MAG! It is after all only football...... Was Bill Shankly right all along? Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that. Let me put things in perspective. I’m a 57 year old man living in East Anglia. I call myself a Geordie, but I’m not. My Grandfather was born in Newcastle but my maternal family were South Yorkshire miners, my paternal grand father was a shop steward in the Welsh steel yards. When it comes to rugby I feel Welsh tf 62
through and through. My parents moved to the North Tyneside coast when I was 7 to pursue their teaching careers, fifty years ago! I remember the weekend we moved to Whitley Bay, meeting the local kids and thinking ‘what is this language they’re speaking?’. I quickly learned to understand them and I swiftly fell in love with the place. I adored living by the coast. My grandparents had moved up from Yorkshire with us and my grandfather and I used to enjoy going to the fish quay in Shields to watch the trawlers being
unloaded and the fisher women at work. I was out of the house all day in the holidays and weekends. I loved discovering Northumberland ( still my favourite county), the Borders, the proximity to the Lakes and Scotland, Durham. I was at home. I remember the launch of the big ships and the crowds that would gather. I remember the smell of the brewery when in the city with my Mum. I remember hearing the sound of a crowd when walking round the town centre and learning that it was the crowd at the football match cheering a goal.
I remember hearing the sound of a crowd when walking round the town centre and learning that it was the crowd at the football match cheering a goal. www.true-faith.co.uk