Lightness in the dark of the tunnel

This is one of the few things which brought a smile to my face over the last few weeks!

What ?

Back in the 1970's I used to read top war magazine Warlord and became a member of their club. Your Warlord reader was enlisted as a secret agent by Lord Peter Flint and could dream of a fingerprint kit, a heliograph, a secret agent stamp or even the adventure kit including such delights as a camera, binoculars and a water bottle. No sham of a club was this, the agents had to compile dossiers on the “enemy” and they had to be completed punctually and maintained as Lord Peter could call for them to be submitted in the event of a national emergency.

Me and my friends were convinced that the country was about to be invaded by Germans, and we thought the invasion likely to come on Tynemouth long sands. We dedicated ourselves to putting in place detailed plans and equipment to be used to stop their evil tanks as they landed on the beach and we planned a secondary defence of the metro station.The other certainty was our hatred of rival comic Bullet. It's main character was a character called just "Fireball". He was raised by his uncle, Lord Peter Flint aka Warlord, after his parents, who worked for British Intelligence, were killed in a mysterious car crash.
For 35p you could join the Fireball Club, and get the Top Secret Story of Fireball, a plastic wallet with ID cards and - wait for it - a Fireball pendant made of black plastic that glowed red when you held it up to the light! In our book Fireball agents were the enemy. The rivalry was of course stired up by Warlord and Bullet and we hated their camp pedant wearing agents.

In 1979 the impossible happened and Bullet was merged into Warlord. It was unbelievable, we were being asked to embrace the enemy as Flint reinvented history to make those pesky Fireball agents our friends. It was confusing, seemed morally wrong and I could not get the whole affair stright in my head at all. It was the death knell of the comic, in protest I stopped reading it.

Twenty nine years later just the thought of it still makes me angry.

In the same way that I was confused by events then I am equally confused about recent events at Newcastle. I can normally sit back, reflect and make some sense of events at the club but the last couple of weeks have just just thrown me. I genuinely struggle to make any sense of it all. After a promising start to the season it has all turned to dust. IT is hard to see any way forward at the moment.

I can only turn to the words of nufc.com in December 2001. After the 3-1 win at Arsenal, which not only saw us go top of the league it also saw us finally beat the London hoodoo, they were in celebratory mood. They ended the match report with

"savour it while you may. Anyone remotely familiar with the workings of Newcastle United knows that tragedy and misfortune lies but a footstep away...."

This totally sums up our lot.

Whilst I walked away from Warlord that option is not available as far as the club is concerned. I am stuck with it till the bitter end, wherever that may take us.

We are deluded!

For the last couple of years the media have been telling us that Toon fans have delusions in that we somehow believe we have a right to expect silverware and expect to be challenging at the top every year.

Next time you read a hack or some blog commentator churning out this totally unfounded cliche point them towards this article

"NEWCASTLE United fans are the most pessimistic of all Premiership supporters about the new footie season.
A poll by the National Lottery found that 44 per cent of the Toon faithful believe their team has no chance of silverware."

So that is another myth we can discard then...

Great minds think alike....

....fools seldom differ.

From NUFC.com.

They say its the greatest form of flattery!

(Hopefully) Welcome Fabricio Coloccini

Reports suggest that Fabricio Coloccini was in town today for a medical, and that he was watching the PSV game tonight. Well, he will be our most expensive defensive signing apparently, overtaking the cash we paid for Woodgate.

Lets hope that he and Jonas settle in better than our previous Argentine pairing of Bassedas and Cordone. We desperately needed a genuine quality centre half and the composure of Woodgate has been missed over the last few years. In this strange market we find ourselves in, quality does not come cheap I guess.

Fingers crossed that the (hated) Mick Wadsworth South American crazyness back in 2000 mistakes are not repeated. With the possible exception of Acuna the South Americans signed when Robson handed him a ticket to South America spectacularily failed. As well as the Argentines, Wadsworth trip to the Americas also saw Gavillan come to the club. He also convinced Bobby to sign Jose 'Fumaca' Antunes, possibly the only Brazilian who could not play football. Fumaca had played for Wadsworth at Colchester and having had unsuccesful trials with a number of lower league clubs was clearly ready to take the step up to the Premier League.

The 1990's saw the import of relatively cheap European players flooding the UK but now those players are no longer cheap so it is no surprise that we are paying through the nose for this bloke.

Fingers crossed.

El Hadji Dwarf

A few seasons back I went to see the Toon play Liverpool midweek and stayed the night at an Everton mates house. After the game we met up with a mutual Liverpool supporting mate and his friends for a drink near the ground. Apart from drawing attention to me by shouting at the top of their voices that I was a Toon fan to all in the bar it was a good laugh (helped by the fact a certain Mr Shearer somehow managed to help us come away with a late point).

They explained that one of their friends was a PORG (a person of restricted growth). It was his birthday and as a present the lads had chipped in to buy him a new club shirt. As a special treat they decided to put the name of one of the then players on the back. So they gave him a shirt with the name El Hadji Dwarf. .


I wonder if the are many PORG Sunderland fans who might be getting a surprise birthday or Christmas gift, I suppose it will update the Milton Nunez shirts.

I notice that El Hadji Diouf's move has resulted in some rather vitriolic responses from Bolton fans. I guess with enemies like this there is little left for the likes of us to say!

Chim chimeney cherroo

This amusing video is rather silly to say the least. At least we have not gone for something as stupid as odd dancing ladies yet.

They are dancing like lurverly cockernee Spurs fans...is that Dick Van Dyke at the front?

For f**ks sake

Here we go again. The NOTW publish some fantasy story about Ashley selling the club to Far Eastern billionaires (they must be running out of people to link the club with soon) and the world and his wife jump on the bandwagon. Our friend Louise Taylor reports that a Newcastle spokesman dismissed it as "absolute rubbish". However she then states "but there is substance" in the story and confidently states "that Ambani, 49, who boasts a personal fortune of £21bn, is believed to be prepared to invest about £100m in new players and hopes that the process of due diligence can begin this week."

Queue the following typical comments "Sources insist" and "Ashley has seemed reluctant to back Newcastle's manager". Pretty standard fair from LT.

Lo and behold and today Reuters publish a statement

"NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Reliance Communications, India's No. 2 mobile operator, on Monday denied reports that it was in talks with English Premier League football club Newcastle United.

Media reports in the U.K. said the club's owner Mike Ashley was in talks with Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani about a 260 million-pound takeover by the Indian billionaire.

"The news report is completely false and baseless. There are no such plans," Reliance Communications said in a statement.

Will we be getting a retraction from Louise then? No, but funnily enough my prediction about the story resurfacing has sdaly come true...

"What we can expect is that in a few months the story will reappear again and they will dredge up these unfounded rumours as fact."

More Moral Outrage

Surprise surprise The Guardian jumps on the moral bandwagon via Lawrence Donegan today. I guess they decided Louise Taylor could have a day off putting the knife in.

I quite liked the comments made about convicted Journo Rob Shepherd whose career does seem to have been re-established despite a 14 month sentance for attacking a man in a wine bar. I wonder how many of his fellow journalists demanded he be thrown out of the profession at the time?

In a continuing 1990's comedy theme, during a Nicey and Smashie sketch they talk about the issue of Capital punishment. They conclude that the death penalty should only be applicable to murderers of Police and DJ's. Perhaps Journalists are following a similiar moral code over Barton...

More irony than you can shake a stick at!

I was pondering today about the media discussion over the Nike decision to terminate Barton's contract after his prison stint. Funny how they waited until now to announce it, but anyway the Fiver got there before me over commenting how Nike taking the moral high ground is a bit of a kettle, pot, calling and black situation:

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"We have provision in all our sponsorship contracts that take into account any actions by an athlete that brings the brand into disrepute. While Joey is a talented footballer, we cannot condone or accept what he did" - Nike suits explain that they're cancelling Newcastle footballer Joey Barton's £40,000-per-year boot deal because he has a history of mistreating children and violating human rights.