Newcastle United NUFC

Giving up work, home and car in the middle of a recession and spending my redundancy money on travelling the world with Wifey was always an entirely daft thing to do. It has been described as “brilliant” and “brave” by friends and colleagues when the word they were trying not to use was “daft”. Nearly a year later I have little income, strangers are living in our house in Newcastle and my only form of transport needs new tyres so I can’t even make like Norman Tebbit’s dad and get on my bike.
It would be entirely understandable at this point to rue the error of our ways and regret the whole affair. Especially in the light of having missed, first hand at least, the best Newcastle United season in years (as well as gigs in Newcastle by Rise Against, Mariachi El Bronx and Doug Stanhope). But where is the point in that? The decision was made, there can be no going back and we would do it again anyway because it was brilliant. More regret could be found in our not stopping longer or for good in places along the way that offered the opportunity for a warmer way of life than merry olde Albion. Emails from or pictures of Auckland offer a sharp stab to the heart on this latter point but in truth we couldn’t stay. The untimely death of our lovely mate Barry asked the question, “should we fly back for his funeral and if not his, then for whom?” but you think that stuff through and you would sooner see all your friends when they are alive rather than their sad families when they’re gone. So when people dear to us ask why we came back we answer “because you might die” which usually stops them asking.
So, in short, we were always going to return to England and the homeless, jobless, wet and crap bits were inevitable. Should we have taken the easier, normal path towards life’s end? I should hope the f*ck not. I don’t want to repent at leisure anymore than darling Joey Barton seems to be doing after his extraordinary behaviour at Manchester City.
(If you will allow me a brief digression: as usual too many people are keen to start battering Joey with their moral outrage. For example Mr Shearer on Match of the Day seems to forget his own European ban for elbowing an Inter Milan player was for a much harder blow than Barton struck on Tevez. And as ever many of Barton’s judges miss the point; which was that Barton at Man City was really, really funny and would have been funnier still if Barton had slapped De Jong, punched Gareth Barry in the nuts and booted David Platt up the arse on his way off the pitch. Barton’s behaviour doesn’t affect Newcastle United anymore so we Newcastle fans are all free to enjoy the comedic majesty of it. I know I was plumping up a cushion and rubbing my hands with glee as the moment approached on the Sunday evening.)

So having missed out on a frankly ill-deserved place in the Champions League, thanks to the 13 goals we conceded at Norwich, Fulham and Wigan, Newcastle United have to contend with the Europa League and all the woe that will beget us.
Games on a Thursday night, strain on the small squad, too much time travelling (that’s time spent travelling not travelling through time – suffice to say if I come across such an opportunity I will be delivering a young Peter Beardsley to Uncle Mike’s Toybox lickety-split). Losing games to crap teams on a Sunday lunchtime because we played in the Ukraine on a Thursday night might, for example, include losing to sunderland. There is very little financial gain and it would be much better to get out of the competition as soon as possible to concentrate on matters at home.
Say what now?
In response to this kind of thinking I will bark “Balls!” like Withnail. Being in Europe is f***ing brilliant. To consider qualification as the mark of a successful season then moan about it is perverse and craven. We must leap into the unknown and the devil take the hindmost.
The peak of Sam Allardyce’s achievements at Bolton was to sneak them into Europe the season before he came to enlighten Tyneside as to his genius. His replacement, Sammy Lee saw them make progress abroad if not at home so he was replaced by Gary Megson. Megson in an act of rank cowardice chose to rest most of his first choice players for a UEFA game to save them for a relegation 6 pointer the following weekend. Many Bolton fans, enjoying being in Europe for the reward and opportunity that it is, were understandably livid. They lost both games, Megson later got sacked and now two years later Bolton have been relegated anyway. They earned themselves the chance to do something special and they didn’t take it – now that is something you would regret at leisure.
Yes the modern Europa League lacks glamour for the neutral: how many of us took any interest in the campaigns of Fulham, Stoke and Birmingham this season beyond being: a) nicely surprised at how easily we beat Fulham at SJP after they had an away trip, b) laughing at Tony Pulis having his tactical pants pulled down and, c) forgetting Birmingham were even in it. The Manchesters both treated the competition like it was a drab party they were happy to be asked to leave and Arsenal fans, awful snobs that they are, looked about to need someone to pass the vapours at the very idea of being in the second tier of European football. Managers and teams get little or no credit for winning games at this level; when Newcastle won in Palermo under Glen Roeder the Sicilians were top of Serie A and even some Newcastle fans didn’t notice how brilliantly we had done.
But, like giving up your job and travelling the world, being in Europe isn’t about other people’s perceptions of you – it really is all about you. You don’t do it for other people, you do it for you and if you can live with the consequences, get on and enjoy the experience. Let other people live their lives as they will and let them sneer if they want.

Newcastle fans will have to live with the fact that we won’t do as well in the League next season, like I have to live with the fact that I might have to take a job sweeping the car park at Aldi to see any of it. But the important part of that sentence is “To Live.”
Living, not merely existing until you don’t, is surely the central most important part of what life is all about. Finding yourself or your football team in Slovakia or Istanbul on a wet Thursday night looks more like living than staying at home and damn those who think otherwise.

So the Furious tour crash landed back in the UK just in time for the coldest, wettest miserablist Spring since the last mammoth gave up living as an option. Charmed I’m sure but having spent the fat end of a year travelling the world – what did we learn?
Well, if you drive across North America on a diet which consists mostly of carrots and beer, the weight just falls off you. Carrots are loaded with vitamins but American beer is all rubbish. Costa Rican beer is magnificent and if you go (which you should) you have got a better chance of finding some than you have of finding the scarlet macaw that adorns most the guidebooks. By which I don’t mean a specific scarlet macaw (which presumably has a brilliant agent) I mean any macaw at all. There were no toucans either, but plenty of monkeys, f*cking each other in the tree tops. Yep we learned that, anything else?

Well you know how we English get all precious about the Argentineans invading the Falklands – did you know England tried to invade Argentina in 1806 and 1807? Argentina is massive, we sent two warships to conquer all of it, and we say their invasion was ill advised. So we actually started it and your actual Belgrano, the General they named the doomed battle ship after, he designed the modern flag of blue and white. During the country’s civil war both sides were fighting under the same colours and the good General was apparently the only person who recognised this was a problem. He died of Dropsy and was fair riddled with the clap.
I understand that I need to at least mention football by the third paragraph or half my readership will wander off; from our own anecdotal evidence the press in every country we visited expects its national football team to win the World Cup and gets annoyed when it doesn’t. People think this is a strangely English problem, it’s not. Every country, including New Zealand (who actually did win the last World Cup in so far as they were the only undefeated team in it) and Vietnam (where their National team is Manchester United) demand victory or the stories will spread that the coach is a fool and the players spend too much time in discos demanding blowjobs.
Many of the actual people in most countries along our route hate politicians and bankers as much as we do. I’m not sure if that is encouraging or depressing. The centre of Santiago in Chile smells often of tear gas because the young folk are perpetually cross about not being able to afford to go to school. Strange that the riots in London last year were perpetuated by people who having been offered free education demanded sports gear and electrical stuff out of Curry’s window instead. Kind of on the subject,; last year in Holland customers of the ING bank were so disgusted that chief executive Jan Hommen was awarding himself a £1 million bonus that they threatened to take all their money out of his bank if he did so. Nobody got arrested, nothing got set on fire but Mr Hommen and other Dutch bankers had to refuse their bonuses because of it. Meanwhile in this country according to the Observer, “Stephen Hester, head of state-controlled RBS in the UK, is in line for up to £7.7m, Bob Diamond of Barclays is to collect as much as £6.5m, and some senior bankers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are looking at windfalls of about £40m each.” – why aren’t we told about what happened in Holland, it is such a feel-good inspirational story? I have already taken the £78.12 I had in my Barclays account and spent it – in your face Bob Diamond, how do you like them apples? Smash the System!
Oh I can sense some of you wandering off again…….. come back you’ll like this bit; something else I learnt is that sunderland’s club motto is apparently “Consectatio Excellentiae” which might sound like a spell from a deleted scene from a Harry Potter movie where Ron Weasley learns to make Hermione’s clothes fly off with a wave of his wand but in fact means “in pursuit of excellence”. I don’t know if this has always been their motto or if it is something they have awarded themselves recently in yet another act of failed and pathetic grandiosity but what a great motto for them. “In pursuit of excellence.” Not aspiring to excellence or wishing to be excellent but chasing it about like Elmer J Fudd pursues Bugs Bunny i.e. pulling a silly enraged face while being outsmarted at every turn. What, we all wonder, do they intend to do with this excellence should they ever catch us…. I mean it? Kick it obviously, experience has taught us that, but then what? “Consectatio Canis” again I suppose which means “In pursuit of the dog.” What the Latin for “with your trousers round your ankles” is, I can’t be bothered to look up and I doubt it would fit on their badge anyway. Another thing I learned is that the number of Aston Villa season ticket holders dropped each of the four years Martin O’Neil was in charge there. Do with that information as you see fit, I choose to find it reassuring.
Reassurance I have learnt is what we crave most as a species. Americans don’t want people with exploding underpants flying into their country and want reassurance that they can be stopped. New Zealanders want to be reassured that all their volcanoes won’t go off at once, Australians that the Chinese aren’t going to evict them when they have succeeded in buying the whole country, and millions of people elsewhere want to be reassured that next week, or next month or next year they will be able to feed themselves and their families.
Newcastle fans want to be reassured that the club won’t sell all our good players like the press keep threatening. It’s going to be a long and boring summer if we all get our knickers twisted every time that subject comes up and there is nowt we can do about it anyway. So what I’m still trying to learn is to not worry about it.
One thing that I would like you dear reader to tell me the answer to is this – if when England play France next month Hatem Ben Arfa and Yohan Cabaye are playing against Stevie G, J.T. and Ashley Cole – who are we supposed to want to win?

Standing at Victoria Coach Station somewhat dishevelled, clutching a bottle of Irn Bru like a Glaswegian vagrant one couldn’t help but think that some of the glamour of this World Tour malarkey was starting to wear a tad thin. Wifey and I left Newcastle in June 2011 in order to charge recklessly around the planet before humanity’s idiot greed makes the whole place uninhabitable. This has involved a lot of waking up in the morning and saying, “I can’t believe we are doing this”, in entirely different tones of voice depending on our circumstances; from incredulous to privileged we have regretted little and met some incredible people in astonishing situations.

Newcastle fans from all over the globe have helped; ranging from advice on Twitter, helpful emails and contacts – to people showing more kindness and generosity than we ever would have asked for or expected. The rest of the page should be filled with names and deeds but I don’t trust myself not to forget somebody vital and I have tried to thank people as we have gone along. On the last leg Chris and Ilse in Thalang (Thailand) rescued us; picking us up after a 21 hour bus trip (it should have been 12) and dropping us in their pool with a freezing cold beer or ten before feeding us and providing a bed for the night. The fact that they didn’t know us from a hole in the ground before they did so is incredible. Jon who met us back in London on the other hand has known us for years but still allowed us into his home. I should say that not all our new friends have been Newcastle fans but it has been a genuinely humbling experience. So thanks to you all, even the odd word of encouragement or “I was there in 2005, it was brilliant” online has been appreciated.

We’ve now been back two weeks and a few things have come to my attention; 82p for a packet of crisps, what the bloody hell is going on with that? How is this coven of lizards of a Government still running the country (when I left specific instructions) and why are they all pretending to shop at Greggs? “Pray for Muamba” – I hope he gets better but I’m not about to adopt religion on the back of it. “I didn’t used to believe in God but that hashtag was a theological epiphany for me” – really? Kevin Keegan on ESPN talking about Manchester City’s tactical deficiencies – what does bloody Keegan know about tactics? Or anything else for that matter, didn’t he say Ashley wouldn’t spend any of the Carroll money on players? Ben Arfa, Cabaye, Ba, Santon, Cisse –shall I go on or will we agree not to ask Mr Keegan about Newcastle anymore? After all if he had got the £25 million he was suing the club for we might not be where we are now. And before some of you start; don’t talk to me about breaking rank on keeping the pressure up on Mike Ashley when the club shops and Sports Direct in Newcastle are completely sold out of black away kits.
People are clearly excited about the team that has been put together and the way they are playing under Alan Pardew. However many seem wary of expressing that excitement for fear of being accused of being some quisling collaborator by what seems to be an increasingly rabid minority. We could all quite rightly worry that the club will cash in on some of our better players in the close season but where would be the fun in that? Even from some of the more inaccessible places I have found myself in the last ten months it has become increasingly obvious that the initial naivety that afflicted the Ashley regime has been replaced with a cold eyed ruthless streak. So any players we lose (and every team in the country could lose anybody if the right team comes calling) probably won’t be allowed to leave cheaply. Even after a season of being in the top six the journalists on Sky’s Sunday Supplement still can’t discuss Newcastle without a wry smile like the next crisis is just around the corner. In fairness to them, it probably is but again, where’s the fun in that for us fans? And, we sometimes need to remind ourselves, we are allowed to enjoy football without fretting about what might happen later.
We know the media can’t be doing with happy Newcastle fans but all they have to fall back on as evidence of our ongoing terminal misery at present is the ground re-naming. Why don’t we all agree to call St James’ Park “Uncle Mike’s Toy Box” so we can’t be beaten with that stick anymore and leave the displays of simpering sentimentality to the Scousers, who do it so much better than us. (Note: Liverpool and Everton would both happily tear their traditional homes down and we’re supposed to be worried about a name change that is easily ignored?)

Speaking of Liverpool, how does LFC fan Alan Parry always get the commentator gig for our fixture against them on Sky? Also, on the well reported condemnation from Liverpool fans and players regarding James Perch for falling over when Reina butted him in the face; how many of this Liverpool team would have stayed on their feet if the situation was reversed? And in the first half of the same game Steven Gerrard deliberately kicked the ball against Cisse, who had his back turned, at a free kick to get our player booked. It wasn’t mentioned on the commentary, on Match of the Day 2, or in any of the match reports I have seen. He wasn’t trying to take the kick quickly, it was a deliberate cynical act of premeditated gamesmanship from a player who thinks he is entitled to captain his country. Proof, if it were required, that he is not. The ****.
Finally a special thanks to all of you who have pointed out how well Newcastle United have been doing since Wifey and I left the country. In our defence NUFC stopped winning major trophies long before we started attending Uncle Mike’s Toy Box in the first place and we have had better seasons than this while in 100% attendance – so we doubt the validity of the claim. However, I’m damned I’m taking the blame for any subsequent disaster so we’ll be staying out of town until the season is over. To which end – the tour continues.
In return for this selfless act could those of you who haven’t already done so buy a copy of Spitting in the Wind – only I fancy a packet of crisps

Above is the new book “Spitting In The Wind” which is out now!

£11.99 With Free UK Delivery

£16.99 Delivered anywhere in Europe

£19.99 Anywhere else on The Planet

The days in South East Asia have rushed past like a hunting wolf pack; magnificent, with the flashing of savage smiles, hearts beating hard with excitement and a smell in the air of pure living. In reflection it is hard to pick out individuals; there was a day on a 3rd class train carriage that had no glass in the windows, sat on wooden benches breathing fumes and spitting ashes from the field fires. With no idea how long we had been travelling or how far it was to our destination, the dark green countryside flickering strobe-like. Hat brim low, sunglasses as goggles and I-pod on shuffle – it was wonderful. Cambodia I think it was, now we are in Vietnam where “hello” has switched from “su-i-ci dai” to “sin jao” and the preferred beer brands have changed as we travelled north.

We met Jim from Newcastle in Ho Chi Min City (which he, like many of the residents, calls Saigon) and Jim rides a scooter. It is impossible for a camera or a paragraph to begin to capture the number of scooters in HCMC, they swarm in their millions, intertwining, mounting the already crowded pavements, three or four people perched on one machine, people transporting goods, livestock, a car windscreen, a four foot wreath. 12 thousand people a year are killed on the roads in Vietnam, traffic lights are purely for decoration, you cross from one side of the road to the other by walking slowly and allowing the deafening tide of engines and horns to swirl around you. Reaching the other side you feel an exhilaration and relief equal to having passed your driving test, which few people here have actually done it seems.
Jim’s scooter stands out from the millions because it has black and white stripes, he drinks in a bar called Phatty’s and it was parked outside when we arrived. We didn’t know Jim before we walked in the door but the conversation rattled along from the off as is so often the case when Newcastle fans meet. The tribe has a shared history and a communal experience that means a lot is understood without the need for explanation. It’s been magical where so ever we have encountered it and especially so with Jim who is a funny, generous and gentle fellow. Like all of us he turns feral when actually watching a game so it would have been good to have seen the derby match with him but our schedule dragged us away.
The day before the game against sunderland Wifey and I were in Nha Trang which is a seaside resort with silver sand that burns a bare foot after mid day and a surf line that demands you cavort in it. The waves rise and crash with a peculiar beach side force that means a swimmer can be propelled from chest deep to ankle deep like a penguin fleeing a sea lion. Children from 7 to 47 laugh and spit sea water and dive back for more.
Later we raise a glass to our daft, irascible, beautiful, restless spirited mate Jamie who, we heard this day, took his own life. Dammit Jamie.
We thought we were due on a overnight train to Da Nang when the filthy troop of idiot baboons would be taking their overly generous away allocation on Level 7 so, short of checking our squad for fresh injuries from pointless international matches, we tried to put the whole affair out of our minds. Then we did the maths.
The seven hour time difference meant the noon kick-off at SJP would actually mean a 9pm-ish final whistle in Nha Trang. Which was pretty much when we would be leaving our hotel for the train station. Not only that but we had watched Arsenal win at Liverpool in our room the night before so we probably had the required channel.
We could see it.
At which point the agitation galloped up at us. The excitement, the anxiety, scanning recent results for clues to form, should we allow Ben Arfa onto the same grass as that odious f***ing sack of shit Lee Cattermole? And what does it say about modern football that we ask the question at all? In the long term Martin O’Neil will come up short at sunderland because players who have a choice won’t want to live there and he will strop off as soon as the cheques for new players dry up but in the short term? His “everybody run around a lot, leave your foot in, get the ball up to the big fella, run around until exhausted, hope the game ends before the good players on the other side realise,” tactic will be effective. All this and more is spinning round my brain as we rickshaw race with some companions to a local restaurant. (I was second out of 15 by the way and was still complaining “rickshaw racing was ruined the day they outlawed the use of the whip” as I tackled my first drink).
Wifey checks her watch (mine is in a bin somewhere in New Zealand); it is five minutes to kick off. None of our party shares our desperation to know what is happening in Newcastle so our urgency for the bill and a taxi the second the last plate is cleared is unechoed. It is a hot and humid night in Nha Trang, T-shirts stuck to our backs, trying to work out if our skin is prickling from excitement or from the strength of our insect repellent. We crash into our hotel room to turn on the TV. 68 channels and nothing. That can’t be right. We roll round again. “Next” – reads a preview page “Live English Premiership football” and the programme only lasts half an hour. Which is about how long the game has left. We are the only Premiership game happening “live” in the world – this has to be it. The logo comes up, three guys in the studio put their hands together and bow…
…then the screen turns black. Jim warned us about this, we search some more somehow hoping that if we sneak up on the blocked channel it might let us in. It doesn’t. We grab our bags and rush to the lobby for an internet connection. The BBC is often “unavailable” in Vietnam so we go to Twitter in time for Ba to miss his penalty. 0-1, oh for phucsake. Bags are being loaded onto a bus, we have to go. We are submitting slowly to despair when Lee Ryder from the Chronicle tweets “SHOLAAAAAAA!” and our cheers echo round the busy lobby. Our tour guide is clapping his hands and shouting “chop chop” as the final whistle is reported. We bundle onto the bus last, giddy with joy, imagining the stupid twisted faces of our enemy.
We saw highlights on the internet in enchanting Hoi An and enough of the re-run of the whole game in Hué. Even knowing the score it doesn’t look like we were going to equalise – credit to Pardew and our team’s spirit that they didn’t stop believing, just a shame the chance to win it fell to Williamson and not Cabaye.
Now we are in Hanoi where the sky is as grey as the buildings. We haven’t been cold for months and we are trying to tell ourselves that 17 degrees isn’t excuse for two coats. Tomorrow we fly back to Bangkok where we hope to complain about the heat again, before heading to Phuket.
Like I said the days are running like wolves and sometimes you have no choice but to run with them.

The Furious World Tour was in Melbourne when Tottenham beat Newcastle United thanks to a goal and four assists from a player who should, by any definition of fairness, have been ineligible. Firstly, Premiership teams have no business doing other teams in the same division favours.

More importantly, how can it be against regulations to play a deliberately weakened team when a fit and available player (Adebayor) can play against one team (Newcastle) but can’t play against another (Manchester City)? The loan system is being abused; Manchester City have bought enough advantage without being able to plant “ringers” in to other teams and our chance of winning the League this season has been ruined entirely because of it. (A brief pause follows while I try to maintain an expression of serious and angry incredulity.)
The team and supporters of Newcastle United then enjoyed one of those mid-winter breaks that folk have been rattling on about for years. How was that for you?
Enough about you, we were in Melbourne to hook up with Andrew from the Aussie Mags. Andrew was such excellent company that we hooked up with him again the next day by which point he was presumably regretting being quite so excellent. Melbourne looks to be a cracking city with loads going on but the price of the drinks was enough to send us scuttling out of town, never mind the fact that the trams there seem to be actively trying to kill visiting drivers. We drove back to Sydney along the coast which took the fat end of four days. On the map this journey looks to be about three inches but Australia becomes mind-bendingly huge when you start trying to move around it.

Australia’s cricket team were playing a three way One Day International series with India and Sri Lanka so we went to the SCG to see a match. We lost two hours because of rain but Sri Lanka still won easily, Ricky Ponting was out for 2 but the highlight was getting to see Malinga’s bonkers bowling action. We have been calling him Chucky Whorehair for years but had to keep our voices down because we were sitting amongst some of the hundreds of enthusiastic Sri Lanka fans. Four English pounds for half a pint of draught witch’s piss by the way. For the same price you can buy four large bottles of delicious 5% Singha beer just off the Khao San Road in Bangkok. So despite the noise, the crowds and the pollution we were delighted to get to Thailand.
The first Thai person we spoke to at the airport asked where we were from, when we answered he said, “Newcastle. Tynesiders. Toon Army. Our Prime Minister before last supported Newcastle,” then he showed us his Manchester United key ring. The people are astonishingly friendly, inquisitive and helpful in Bangkok, even the people who are not trying to sell you something. They point insistently towards tourist attractions even if you have just been there and they always ask where you are from. One guy tapped his heart and simply said “Gary Speed” when we told him.
If you have read The Beach or seen the annoying film (with Leonardo DiCaprio) of the same story you will be aware of The Khao San Road; if not, you should know it is the backpacker capital of this planet. Dreadlocks, tattoos, tatty clothes and piercings abound amongst tourists of all ages from all over the world. It’s a place that buzzes with life 24 hours a day, people will knock you up a banquet from a wheeled cart, that you can garnish with fried grasshoppers, worms or scorpions from another. But there is also a KFC and a Subway and amongst the stalls selling handmade crafts are impressive looking copies of Dr Dre’s Beats headphones in very convincing boxes. Nearly all the bars have TVs and nearly all the TVs are showing football. The locals fall over themselves to tell you they love football, with Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool depressingly and predictably prominent. We did see a couple of Man City shirts but the only Newcastle shirt was on the young son of a French family visiting the stunning Wat Pho Buddhist temple. However, for all the brutal bulldozing of Premiership marketing one of the important things we have learnt from this trip is that Barcelona are the people’s team right now. Red and blue shirts, usually with Messi on the back, swarm where so ever football beats in the hearts of the people. Basically what I’m saying here is that all Newcastle need to do to be the biggest team on the planet is to behave and play better than Barcelona. It really is that simple.
We have since moved on from Bangkok; we took the train to Cambodia and are currently holed up in Siem Reap which is where you stay when you want to see the temples. Oh and you do want to see the temples – you might not know it – but you do. The picture at the top of the page is of the sun rising over Angkor Wat and that wasn’t even the highlight of our day yesterday.

I’ll spare you the details because there is no way I can bend them to include Newcastle United. Truth be told I forgot all about Newcastle United which was a rare and wonderful feeling I can tell you. And you can’t touch me for it because I was on a Winter Break.

Above is the new book “Spitting In The Wind” which is out now!

£11.99 With Free UK Delivery

£16.99 Delivered anywhere in Europe

£19.99 Anywhere else on The Planet

Our mate Jon asked what we thought of Sydney and Wifey said we liked it but we didn’t love it. “You don’t have to love Sydney,” Jon replied, “Sydney is already in love with itself.” You can’t help but see what he means; it’s a vibrant, busy city with a “if you don’t like it, piss off” swagger. Which is either admirable or irritating depending on the depth of your hangover when confronted by residents being… er… Australian.
So how come we are here for a third time?

We made Sydney a hub for our time in New Zealand and South East Asia because our mate James lives here and we love James. He and I ran, promoted and DJed The Scarlet Weasel club night at Newcastle’s legendary Riverside. We won “Best Nightclub in Newcastle” in 199something as voted by the readers of Paint it Red magazine which entirely coincidentally, was a publication I was working for at the time.
It is better for all concerned that James and I live on opposite sides of the planet because much of our communal behaviour over the years has been reprehensible; kicking each other around football pitches, drinking too much and some other stuff we needn’t get into just now. Breakfast with James is as likely to involve a tequila shot as it is jumping into the Pacific Ocean. Days flash by in a haze of silliness, nights end abruptly when he falls asleep or don’t when he doesn’t.
I recently wouldn’t let James leave an Auckland gym until we had been there 3 hours and he retaliated by dragging me out of bed last Saturday morning to do an Australian “boot camp”. This last assault included so many “lunges” and “tiger crawls” that I lost the ability to climb stairs for 48 hours. Naturally James found this hilarious.
James has a season ticket for Sydney FC and he made Wifey and I go and see them play the Newcastle Jets at the weekend despite the fact that 3 months in New Zealand has qualified us as Wellington Phoenix fans. I say Phoenix fans, we only ever saw them play on TV and often couldn’t be bothered to do that. But they do have a very pretty kit (black and yellow stripes), unlike Sydney who play in sky blue and Newcastle who play in dark blue and red.

We checked the internet before venturing out and reports from the UK predicted plummeting temperatures and heavy snow. Our major concern was not sticking to a fellow passenger on the overcrowded bus into central Sydney such was the sweaty heat.
There are 10 teams in the A League who play each other 3 times each before the top 6 teams qualify for the playoffs. The play-off system is then so complicated that nobody I have spoken to quite knows what the hell is going on. The higher a team finishes the more games it gets at home, Phoenix are 2nd, but the game we were being marched towards was a crucial 6th v 7th encounter.
The stadium is splendid if a trifle sparse, a crowd of 14,000 leaving 30,000 seats empty; the Newcastle fans, numbering a couple of hundred, at the far end. Lots of replica kits are in attendance representing teams who are not. From our thankfully shaded vantage point I saw three Arsenal, a couple of Liverpool, a Barcelona and in our row a Newcastle United shirt, the owner of whom I didn’t speak to. I am now of an age where I don’t start conversations with young folk in case they think I am some sort of predatory pervert. Besides which I was still shocked at a red and white shirted bod plonking himself right in front of us.
(The internet session in the morning had also included a check of the English league table where we found evidence of sunderland looming up at us from their traditional home in the depths beneath obscure mediocrity. No doubt rising on a wave of hot air, after an exquisite display of beautiful football in the Potteries, our snaggle-toothed neighbours are standing too close to us in public. People may think us a couple and the thought distressed me.)
I was going to insist we move but it turned out the red and white shirt was a Stoke fan (mildly less loathsome). The next I saw was a Sheffield United shirt, then the next Brentford, by which point I was starting to agree with James’ belief that it is bad form to wear a replica kit to a game where that team isn’t actually playing.
Of course a Newcastle shirt is entirely forgivable especially today as Newcastle Jets away kit this season is black and white stripes. This is pretty cute of them, perhaps we should adopt this Newcastle as some kind of holiday home for recuperating or wayward squad members. Threatened deportation might have made Nile Ranger behave a bit better. Certainly the A League could do with importing more names the many ex-pats down here have heard of.
Francis Jeffers plays for Newcastle Jets.
Nothing else to add to that statement except he was replaced by Michael Bridges who has a squad number 9 on his back.
Newcastle were 0-3 up by halftime, Sydney woke up and clawed it back to 2-3 but Newcastle won 5-2 with neither Jeffers or Bridge scoring. James was unhappy about the scoreline, which at least meant I felt something. A vague amusement is not however enough to sustain a recovering football junkie. Sipping cold beer while watching a game played in sunshine is not something that is easy to get used to either. Perhaps I need more practice.

Previously on the Furious World Tour: the titular idiot Furious, with his brain made of diesel fumes and moon beams, left England in June 2011 with Wifey, his long suffering and considerably better half. A trail of bewilderment, empty beer bottles, train tickets and abandoned hire cars was left across North America before 3 weeks were spent in Costa Rica seeking the mythical scarlet macaw which turned out to be something of a wild goose chase. Strangely wild geese were spotted as were live TV pictures of Joey Barton aggravating Arsenal. There was less luck in finding exotic parrots and live Newcastle United matches in South America where the red wine is cheap and the steaks are fat and bloody. Better fortune in Australia amidst marvellous company and expensive beer. After landing in earthquake ruined Christchurch, a tiny hire car beat the long and winding State Highway 1 through New Zealand to Auckland. The joy of having their own fridge in a kitchen free of thieving French backpackers meant there was little travelling for 10 weeks. Now the tour begins again…

See that picture of Auckland? We have been living over the road from that Sky Tower thing, which means we have become accustomed to living in the centre of a city for the amenities if not for the noise. I long to fling empty beer bottles at vehicles with noisy engines but don’t trust my aim and don’t think that is any way for a guest to behave in a country even in a state of extreme provocation.
To stay in New Zealand long term you need to bring skills currently in demand and my skills on offer are: “complaining and offering unwelcome and unrequested criticism” which I don’t think is on the list; “You people are too fond of rugby, drowning and earthquakes and your Prime Minister (who would attend the opening of a privy door if he thought there was a TV camera on the other side) is selling your country out from under your feet,” I could say and they could say, “if you don’t like it, piss off.” But I do like it, the drinks are splendid and the tattoos magnificent. Unfortunately “tattooed drunk” isn’t on the list either.
The staff opposite our apartment at TVNZ took a month off for Christmas which meant there has been no morning news since Christmas Eve and now they are back they are having a party on the roof. I will need some sort of catapult to hit them with a beer bottle from my balcony but my admiration for the Kiwi work/life balance forbids this despite the fact that the music is as awful as the programmes on the schedule.
Otherwise Auckland has been a cracking city and we will miss it. The Newcastle fans we have met here have been universally excellent and sociable but they all live some distance out of town so catching matches together means meeting at seriously unsociable hours. For example a Sunday afternoon kick off in the UK will be in the wee small hours of a Monday morning here.
We don’t have Sky so rely on the 24 hour bars and coffee shops to see games. If a game is on live that generally means getting up in the middle of the night, if is not we are at the whims of the TV schedule as to when we see the delayed showing. Our mate James was over from Australia (trying to murder us with alcohol again) and we had to wait until midnight Monday to see the drab 1-0 win over QPR. The horrible battering at Fulham was shown at 10.30 Sunday morning. We successfully avoided the score for both games but there is something slightly silly about performing any kind of pre-match ritual for a game that has already finished.

None of the channels here show the FA Cup so in a strange reflection of our feelings (now we have been dumped out) the FA Cup doesn’t exist this season and we will be on our way to Australia when the Blackburn league game is on so we have two weeks off Newcastle United. I’ve got to say this is a blessed relief because while I feel like a warrior walking into a football stadium to see Newcastle play I am a gibbering twitching coward if I have to watch the same game in front of a television set (I’m even worse when it comes to the radio but we haven’t got one). Perhaps this is because I feel I can do something if I am at a game, even if that something is shouting abuse or encouragement at people who can’t hear me. Watching the Fulham game, a game that had been completed hours before I started watching it, I was fidgeting with terror and awaiting disaster despite the fact that we should have been 3-0 up by half time.

This was not because I had a foreboding or because I knew the score, I didn’t, this is simply because this is how I go on now. As you are all too aware that disaster was forthcoming but I’m waiting for that to happen in every game I watch on television. I think my nerve might be shot, that I’m suffering some sort of Newcastle United related shell-shock. Is it just Newcastle fans who expect their team to implode like we did at Norwich and at Craven Cottage? Are we so accustomed to the first bump in the road being sufficient to send all the wheels flying off and for the engine to explode (like in the home game against Chelsea) that we can’t enjoy a game until it is finished? Or is that just me? 3-0 up against Manchester United and 20 seconds left on the clock and I was still expecting something awful to occur.
It would be better for me to ignore that there is a game on at all and while we remain in New Zealand I can’t. I lay wide awake at 2am when we played Swansea willing myself to sleep then was relieved I hadn’t wandered down to the pub in my ‘jamas when it turned out to be 0-0. Looking back over our travels my favourite game this season was the win at Stoke and I didn’t see a second of it. In my imagination brilliant black clad heroes meticulously destroyed lumbering red and white monsters while the evil Pulis twitched and raged impotently from the sidelines.
We are off to Sydney again then we have a date with some Newcastle fans in Melbourne then after that we pitch into South East Asia; Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam where I intend to bask in blissful ignorance despite the excitement of having a new number 9 in the squad. For example when we play sunderland we will be on an overnight train to Danang and as Wifey so succinctly put it “we’ve f***in’ had that then.”
So I am getting my excuses in early, if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t take it personally, it’s just that I am ignoring you all.
On the other hand I will be answering emails (specifically from Mags in Melbourne) at billyfurious@googlemail.com