To celebrate the re-opening of our ‘From The Terraces‘ section, featuring content submitted by our readers, we bring you Steve‘s stance on the World’s Greatest Living Supporters(tm).
Good luck…
Every football supporter in the country will lay claim to the fact that they have the best supporters in the country. The more vociferous supporters tend to be supporters of teams who haven’t won anything of note since Geoff Hurst was a lad, a sort of small-penis syndrome. The worst offenders of this are Newcastle United fans, just listening to them and they would have you believe that they were getting average gates of 40,000 in the old Second Division. SKY are no help either, every time the barcodes play they go on and on about how loyal and passionate the Geordies are. Digging deeper into this you’ll find hysterical websites where some attention-seeking fans moan about the likes of me who dare to challenge the myth that Newcastle Supporters are the most self-righteous in the country. If they were the best there wouldn’t need to be an entire website dedicated to arguing the fact, or trying to, since for some reason it cites Luton Town’s attendance of 3,374 against Orient in the Milk Cup in 1984 as ammunition to argue their case.
My belief is that in their pursuit of being a “Big Club” all they have to offer as evidence is their attendances of over 50,000. However, scratching the surface of this will tell us that Newcastle as a football club is roughly 15 miles from their “nearest rivals” Sunderland and about 40 miles from Middlesborough. So basically there is no meaningful competition for support – even Geordies are bright enough to realise that supporting Newcastle represents the best option by some margin. Compare this to Manchester City who get average attendances of about 35-40K despite having two of the biggest clubs in Europe (Manchester United and Liverpool) within 40 miles plus other clubs in the Premiership like Bolton, Wigan, Everton who could all pinch potential support. Newcastle’s attendances are probably so big because there is nothing else in Newcastle other than to go and stare at the Angel of The North, drink bottles of Newcastle brown and bemoan the fact that in the height of Summer it appears to start going dark around 3pm.
Another myth about Newcastle fans is the supposed loyalty and passion for the club through rain or shine. Well, if moaning about your Manager every 12 months until he is sacked is showing “passion” then they can keep it thanks. Nicky Butt recently vowed to silence the Newcastle boo boys as apparantly those loyal and passionate Geordies have decided that a player who has a Champions League winners medal, FA Cup Winners medals and Premiership winners medals isnt good enough to play for their beloved club. In reality, Buttsy really won’t have to worry about it for long as it won’t be long before those sharpening their knives turn their attention to Glenn Roeder.
Newcastle now readying themselves for another crack at the title armed with a manager who has no qualifications, took West Ham to the bottom of the league despite having Defoe, Carrick, Kanoute and Di Canio in his side and whose striking options involve Shola Ameobi ready to perform his best Thierry Henry impression.
So hopefully those 50,000 continue to go to St. James Park ready to enjoy a season no different to the last 50 trophyless years – plenty of huff and puff but no end product.
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