Passion in its purest form
IT STARTS with a collective intake of breath. After that, the clatter of plastic seats bouncing upright as everyone gets on their feet. Then, at last, comes the roar, the loud bit, the best bit.
If you want to know what passion sounds like, stand – and ideally lose your mind and get swept away – inside St James’ Park when Newcastle United score.
That’s just the audio, though; look around and soak in the sights. Arms flying, people jumping around like they have been zapped with a cattle prod, and spontaneous embraces between total strangers. It’s a real sensory experience.
I’ll point out at this stage that other venues in our region work just as well. The North East is a sporting hotbed, not just a football one; I imagine others will no doubt swap out elements of this to fit their own sporting Mecca.
Although I love watching the Newcastle Falcons rampaging their way past opponents at Kingston Park or watching Britain’s most successful basketball team at the Eagles Community Arena, St James’ Park is still the place that provokes the most animated reactions, good and bad.
Sir Bobby Robson called the iconic stadium the “cathedral on the hill”; I jokingly call it – well, semi-jokingly – the factory of sadness. Whatever you nickname it, it remains a place that draws in the masses and supercharges the emotions of tens of thousands of devoted fans every other week.
Bill Shankly’s old adage that football is more important than life and death is a bit of an overstatement and, yes, there are plenty of things more significant than football, but sport is (meant to be) a pleasant distraction from those things.
When you see throngs of people, from all walks of life, moving en masse through Newcastle on a matchday, it only re-emphasises how significant the football club and that 52,000-seater stadium is to the city and region as a whole.
It’s a modern-day colosseum constructed of concrete, steel and glass (though good luck finding much silver in there). Its draw remains – for me at least – as strong as ever, even after years of frustration, ineptitude and/or despair.
My first visit to St James’ was on January 26, 1997, just three weeks after Kevin Keegan’s departure (timing never has been my strong suit), for an FA Cup game with Nottingham Forest. Right from that initial experience, I was taken in by it all. Two goals from Ian Woan ensured Forest came from behind to win 2-1 and helped me to prepare for a lifetime of disappointment right from the start.
I’ve been hooked ever since, though. I’ve missed friends’ birthdays and I’ve reorganised plans at late notice for a fixture change. I even missed the start of freshers’ week at university as I stayed back
to see us lose an ill-tempered game to Hull City where irate fans unfurled a ‘Cockney Mafia out’ banner after Keegan resigned a second time in 2008.
It isn’t all misery, though – honestly. If St James’ is indeed a cathedral, as Sir Bobby used to say, I have seen God (though he was going by the name of Alan Shearer at the time), I have seen (Red) Devils slain, and a Saint(-Maximin) working his magic. Some of the memories created on that turf will stay with me and countless others for a long time yet.
There’s a ritual to it – five or six of us frequent the same pub before every game, take the same walk through Leazes Park, go through the same turnstiles, up the same stairs to the same seats in the Sir John Hall Stand.
It might be different to ours but I imagine that if you asked a great many people at St James’ about their matchday routine, you would get a similarly enthusiastic response that reflects their own ritual.
The experience gets under one’s skin and, while some have taken the difficult decision not to return until current owner Mike Ashley sells up, it’s incredibly hard to switch off. If and when he does leave, get a seismograph, because St James’ Park will be rocking in a way we have not seen in years.
Even when the football is miserable, I can’t stop myself from going back. After moving away from the region for university and work, I would come back whenever possible for the match (and friends and family, I suppose) and seeing how people interact with sport elsewhere made me realise how special it is here.
Many a blank stare have come my way when trying to explain what it means to people with no knowledge of the city.
Whether it’s the factory of sadness (or Saud-ness, depending on how the takeover saga ends), the cathedral on the hill or just St James,’ those shared experiences and the influence of the club on day-to-day life truly matter to so many people here.
The easiest way to convey what it means to those who perhaps don’t understand it is to take them along, let them see the chaos, hear the eruptions of noise and receive a bearhug from someone they have never seen before.
After all, that’s just passion in its purest form, isn’t it?