Memories just as vivid decades on for Toon heroes
UNITED’S 95/96 GREATS RECOUNT THAT MEMORABLE CAMPAIGN IN A NEW TWO-PART SPECIAL FEATURE
IT’S amazing what can stop you in your tracks when you are moving house. As he packed up his belongings earlier this month, Terry McDermott came across a huge framed photo of a Newcastle United squad he still feels blessed to have worked with.
The sight of those smiling faces staring back at him took the former assistant manager back. Back to a time where anything seemed possible at St James’ Park. To a time when McDermott enjoyed going to work with his pal Kevin Keegan. To a time when the Magpies had a 12-point lead at the top of the Premier League...
But while there are so many fond memories associated with that period, there is also one lingering regret.
“When we were moving, I looked at the team and it was beyond belief,” McDermott said. “I thought, ‘Bloody hell, how did we not win the league?’
“Even now, when you see the players at a function, they always say it was the best time they ever had in football and there were some big names included in there. Peter Beardsley? Brilliant. Rob Lee? Unbelievable. John Beresford? Unbelievable.
“They were great players and it was just so sad that we never won that league when we should have done, really.” McDermott and Keegan arrived at a very different club in 1992 but, backed by Sir John Hall and a forward-thinking board, they oversaw a remarkable turnaround, taking a team from a Second Division survival fight to challenging for the Premier League title in just a few years. Keegan, who spent hours reading books on positive thinking, wanted to overtake teams, famously warning Sir Alex Ferguson ‘we will be after your title.’ Whether it was his philosophy, training style or how he got into players’ heads, the influence of Keegan’s hero, Bill Shankly, was clear.
For example, just as Shankly would take the counters representing the opposition’s forwards off the tactics board and put them in his pocket before a game, Keegan would occasionally crumple up the opposition’s teamsheet and tell his side he ‘wouldn’t have any of them.’
Keegan trusted his players’ instincts and football intelligence and although he was wary of over-complicating things, there was a science behind it.
“We had a good scouting system that we put in place and there were four or five lads who would report back on the opposition and we took that seriously,” former firstteam coach Chris McMenemy said.
“The night before an away game, we would sit together and read through all the reports and pick little holes in the set plays of the opposition so it wasn’t just, ‘Go out and play.’”
Thousands of fans would turn up at Maiden Castle to watch training and new signings quickly understood the importance of taking time to sign autographs.
Bonds were quickly established and, a quarter of a century on, the experience of playing in front of so many supporters every day has certainly stuck with the players.
“At my first training session in Durham, I thought, ‘Are we playing a friendly?’” Philippe Albert said. “No, it was a training session and there were 3,000 people around the training pitches!”
Sessions were short and sharp and played at a high tempo so come match day, the players essentially replicated what they had been doing in training.
The hunger of academy graduates like Lee Clark, Steve Howey, Steve Watson and
I remember coming down the steps and I could hear the noise and I was like, ‘Jesus!’
Les Ferdinand on his debut for Newcastle at St James’ Park
Everyone stood back and went, ‘Wow,’ You just thought, ‘If this lad performs, we’ve got a real star on our hands’
Derek Fazackerley on David Ginola
Robbie Elliott showed new signings the levels they needed to be at from day one.
“We probably got more injuries in training than we did in games,” Rob Lee said. “It was all eight-a-side, nine-a-side, how Keegan did it at Liverpool, but it was high intensity.
“There was no pulling out of challenges. We had players that came in who couldn’t even cope with the way we trained. It was 100 miles per hour.
“You had to be sharp from the off – there was no settling-in period. It found people out. If you could maintain that, and play at that level, then you had have half a chance.”
Keegan brought in four new signings – Les Ferdinand, David Ginola, Warren Barton and Shaka Hislop – for a combined £14m in the summer of 1995 as he looked to turn his side into title challengers.
Ferdinand, a club-record arrival, was first to arrive and was the ‘monster’ Keegan needed following the departure of Andy Cole. Nothing, however, could have quite prepared the No 9 for his debut against Coventry.
“I remember coming down the steps and I could hear the noise and I was like, ‘Jesus!’” he said.
“It was just intense. Walking out of the tunnel, you could see the opposite stand and that was packed. All you could see was black and white and then you could hear the noise.
“I was thinking, ‘From the first time I played here, this is what I dreamt about – coming out here and wanting to perform in front of these guys.’
“I remember going out onto the pitch and it took me ages to get into the game because I was just still in awe of the noise and everything that was going on.
“When I actually scored on that day, it was like the roof had come off the stadium because everyone was so delighted that the No 9 had scored on his debut on the first day of the season. It was at that precise moment I kind of realised, ‘Wow, now I know what this No
9 is all about.’”
At the other end of the pitch, Hislop never forgot the deafening roar as he walked out that afternoon.
It had already been an eventful summer for the goalkeeper after he suffered play-off heartbreak with Reading at Wembley; jetted off to Trinidad and Tobago to marry his fiancée, Desha; and was signed up by one of his childhood idols, Keegan.
“I still remember that call now. I’m getting goosebumps,” Hislop said. “Initially, I thought it was a hoax because the speculation had been in the paper but I thought someone was playing a joke on me. I was kind of waiting for him to start laughing!”
Hislop started the season as Newcastle’s No 1 before tearing a thigh muscle in the defeat at Chelsea in November.
The late Pavel Srnicek came into the side and just a week later, the Czech made a stunning save to deny Anders Limpar late on in a narrow win against Everton.
“Pav was like a modern-day player,” John
Burridge, the club’s goalkeeping coach at the time, said. “You could set him on his left or his right and he could hit a 40-yard ball straight up to Les’ chest. It didn’t matter what foot.
“If he got into a panic, if he got into a nasty situation, Pav could do tricks. I used to say to the boss that this kid could play in midfield.”
While Hislop, Ferdinand and Barton all had experience of playing in England, David Ginola was the sole foreign import after arriving from PSG.
Such was his talent, the Frenchman caught the eye in his very first training session as Derek Fazackerley, Newcastle’s former first-team coach, recalls.
“Everyone stood back and went, ‘Wow,’” he said. “When he came in, you just thought, ‘If this lad performs, we’ve got a real star on our hands’ – and so it proved.”
A welcoming dressing room helped the new arrivals to settle in and given how the players all lived relatively close to the city, the squad regularly bonded over dinners at Uno’s on the Quayside.
On one memorable occasion, what was supposed to be a quiet meal for Ferdinand and Barton escalated into a full-blown night out for the whole squad. Years later, that photo sits on the mantelpiece in Ferdinand’s study and is John Beresford’s WhatsApp profile picture.
“It was just the spirit that we had,” Clark said. “Off the field, we were great friends but on the field, we demanded so much of each other.
“We weren’t frightened to fall out to get the right result but, ultimately, the families were all good friends so we had that togetherness and that willingness to fight for each other and coupled with the ability that was in the squad, it wasn’t a bad way to go.”
READ PART TWO OF THE ENTERTAINERS’ STORY TOMORROW.