Both sets of my grandparents were from the Wallsend-Willington Quay area. I attended the Richardson Dees School in Wallsend. I lived on Holly Avenue next to the railway line until Mr. Hitler took care of Holly Avenue and we moved to Chester-le-Street. In my family there really wasn’t any choice or conscious thought about supporting any other team but Newcastle. Like many lads I was one of the pass-over-the-heads, sit-on-the-wall on the Leazes side at St James’ Park. I first saw the Toon play in 1939 and watched them right through the war. They had a goalie called Norman Tapkin at first, followed by Swinburne, Norman Dodgin at half back, Geordie Hair at outside left and of course the great Albert Stubbins at centre forward, as well as a variety of ex-pros etc. Remember Tot Smith at center half? Benny Craig at full back – later to coach the A Team. Then came Tommy Walker, Douggie Wright, Cowell and Corbett at full backs and the team started to build into the great force we knew and loved. I saw Joe Harvey’s first game for Newcastle, Len Shackleton after his transfer from Bradford Park Avenue, Geordie Stobbard and a host of others. I saw Stan Matthews when he was first at Stoke City when they had Neil Franklin, Frank Soo, George Mountford and others.

I started playing in the Chester-le-Street area and missed a goodly amount of Newcastle games in my early teens. My brother signed for Newcastle when George Martin was manager and I got a lot of comp tickets, centre paddock then, and that helped. I had a ticket to Wembley for the Blackpool final in the 50’s, but couldn’t go because I was in Dryburn Hospital for the first of many cartilage operations. But I was there the next year when they beat Arsenal.

When I got to Chester-le-Street I started playing cricket pretty seriously and was probably better at that than football. We used to play representative games against the Northumberland League and I remember Bobby Smithson, Ken Earl, the Clough twins at Blyth, Jack Oakes, D.C.H Townsend and my great friend Jackie Keeler at Benwell. Jack and I shared many years together at Chester –what a great guy. Incidentally at that time both Willie Watson (double international in football and cricket) and Shackleton were playing in the Durham Senior League until Willie went on to bigger things.

I left England in 1960, spent two years in Canada, then came to the States. I played football in San Francisco, met an English girl at one of the games and married her almost 40 years ago – without a doubt the best thing I ever got out of football.

Enough of the history. What of today, first at St. James’s then football in general. Newcastle over the last 20 years seem to have staggered from brilliant potential to mind numbing mediocrity with depressing regularity. We’ve gone from one of the greatest sources of footballers that supplied the whole league with players to a team built with other teams’ cast-offs and second-rate foreigners. For some time now we’ve had a defense that if they were all put up for transfer we would not get a bid on any of them. If Bramble, Boumsong etc are Premiership players I’ll eat hay with a horse. They are clumsy, off-balanced and slow, with a paucity of skills. There isn’t a team in the league that couldn’t do with a classy, dominant center-half (just like the old days) but at Newcastle the need is critical. Next we need some players that can play at premier league level for 90 minutes not ten minutes every now and then. I’ve never seen Dyer play at close to top level for more than 15 minutes a game. I’d rather have a good honest grafter of average talent than some of these five-minute wonders. I honestly think that with a great defense in front of him Shay Given would have been hailed as one of the best keepers in the world. We need to get back to the attractive, flowing, play-down-the-wings football with at least three forwards. If anything proved that only one man up front does not work then this year’s World Cup did that. Unfortunately we’ve seen it at Newcastle too long.