Just who is the enemy here?
What i do know is that the name of our club isn’t living up to it’s billing because there’s nothing United about the feeling amongst us.
There are the fans who go to games,there’s the boycotters,the snipers, the armchair fans and the on the fencers but collectively we all have one crucial thing in common. We all follow Newcastle United.
Whatever a fan wants to do with their time or how they want to show their support for the club is up to them but knocking someone who chooses to do something differently or showing displeasure at this in any form is making the divides ever wider and it isn’t good for us.
The majority aren’t happy with the way things have panned out as a club for us with the worst part of this caused by a lack of communication from the club or dialogue that hasn’t been entirely correct in it’s damming. We can’t change this.
From an argumentative point of view, i can justify that we are being run better financially but that’s only in comparison to Freddie Shepherd. No one else. Shepherd may have dug a big hole financially but the only positive from this regime is the back filling of it…
Football evolves in a person’s life as they get more experience in living it. When we were kids, we weren’t bothered about the politics and only the 11 men in NUFC colours on the pitch mattered in the whole world at that moment. We lived,we breathed the game. As we got older, other responsibilities took control with football a distant second best at regular occurrences, Weddings, funerals etc, you get the jist but we still came back to the sport at the end of the day. The invention of social media including the internet has made the politics of football a part of everyday life with rumour being the main part.
Here at Newcastle, we’ve always had things to grumble at but we’ve always thought nowt of parting with our cash to watch our idols with the likes of facebook and twitter magnifying the intensity of any situation. People complained when i first started to go in the mid to late 70’s and they probably complained many years before that as my dad never stopped. Always complaining but still having the right to watch THEIR team which we all do now. Why should people boycott? Nothing much is different from our history as a club. Fair enough if someone has boycotted all their life but to start for the sake of it or because of one event just seems hypocritical..
Anyway, its personal choice but a choice for a single person, not a reason to be a victim of abuse or having to justify why they want to follow their club and to pinch a quote from the late, great Sir Bobby Robson…..
“What is a club in any case?
Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it.
It`s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes.
It`s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city.
It`s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father`s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”
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