A year in the life of Newcastle United, and NUFC Blog II.
Posted on June 2nd, 2010 | 189 Comments |
Before I begin with the second instalment of our little retrospective, I would like to thank all those who left such wonderful comments about the blog in the first instalment yesterday, and indeed, everyone who has stuck by the blog in general.
I left the first part of this retrospective with one of our stories (by Geordie Deb) written in the aftermath of the sad death of Sir Bobby Robson, as it seemed an appropriate point to finish on. It is now time to move on, mostly through speculative tosh and non stories regarding Ashley’s second attempt to sell the club, as the publicity hounds seeked to captilise once again on one of Newcastle United’s sorrier periods. Of course, there was also the great exodus of supposedly top players at the club which relegation and lesser income streams brought. We saw the departure of Duff, Beye, Bassong, and of course, Michael Owen.
As I hinted at in the previous chapter, this period also saw the emergence of Chris Hughton as a leader under the most testing of conditions as Newcastle got their season in the Championship underway. Both of these facets were kind of hinted at in the first story I have included by someone who was undoubtedly one of our best writers, but who is sadly no longer with us, Hugh de Payen. His small news article on the 29th August last year, “Fire sale over, says Hughton“, seems to hint, albeit faintly, at some kind of ‘turning of the corner’ for the club, with Hughton succesfully calling for an end to the fire sale, and though much depleted in terms of ‘big names’ a greater collective spirit seemed to be emerging, a spirit which barely existed in the previous season of emnity and flux.
A few victories on the pitch even made NUST supporting Bowburnmag, question his previous emnity toward Ashley in another one of his more reflective pieces on Sep 5th entitled “Ashley has made waves but is he turning the tide at Newcastle? In it, he asks:
“What would you say if I was to suggest he may turn out to be, not the worst thing to have happened to Newcastle United in recent years?”
Moving on, sometimes the best stories aren’t always driven by big, current events at the club, whether in the boardroom or on the pitch, and some can even be inspired by the paucity of stories from those places. The next two stories encapsulate this perfectly, and both are once again by NUFC Blog’s master of whimsy, Bowburnmag. The first captures life in the stands back in the eighties, when he was a young supporter, and is called “Whatever happened to the East Stand Kenny Everett?“. The Kenny Everett in the title referred to an an East stander who bore a remarkable resemblance to the comedy DJ who was very popular on the TV and radio of the time. The next story was Bowburn’s short piece on the young player, Haris Vučkić, who is almost certainly the brightest of Newcastle’s young talents. I remember the first time I actually saw him play, and how his natural poise, instinct and ability on the ball convinced me almost immediately, like it did with Peter Beardsley more years ago than I care to remember. Bowburn himself seemed to have had the exact same thoughts as I did. Indulging his habit of giving stories silly titles, his Vučkić piece is called ““Haris, Haris? Who the Vučkić Haris?”
The next story I’ve chosen came from a very occaissional contributor in our earlier days, Micky Toon, where he cuts stright through the mindless, sentimental bull**** and asks why it was such a good thing that ex manager, Kevin Keegan, was attempting to sue the club for £10 million in a piece called “Not Walking in a Keegan Wonderland“. Of course, it turns out that the mini Rasputin was actually attempting to skin the club for a whopping £25.1 million for an estimated lifetime’s earnings, despite moving to expand his chain of Soccer Circuses worldwide, starting with Center Parcs and the Middle East.
Now it really is time that I started choosing some more stories from one of the best writers this blog has had in it’s brief history so far, Hugh de Payen. So, I will conclude this episode in our retrospective with the another story I have chosen from him, which is a fairly wide ranging examination of the pros and cons of Ashley’s reign up to that point (in late September of last year). It is an excellent piece of writing with the straightforward title, “What has Mike Ashley ever done for us?”
Part three will follow soon…
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1091 articles on this blog.
Mike Ashley is the best, Mike Ashley is the future!