From Hong Kong to a honeymoon in the Toon...how Shearer inspires worldwide devotion to United
Shearer-mania swept Hong Kong when the United legend paid a visit. John Gibson witnesses the global reach of the Magpies and their record goalscorer
A YOUNG man making lavish wedding plans may well eye with envy a honeymoon to a far-off land.
It is, after all, an occasion of a lifetime and should be marked as such.
So it is with Ivan Sum, only he is a husband-to-be with a very big difference.
Because he is bringing his bride from home in Hong Kong all the way to Newcastle next month, not for the festive season but to celebrate their nuptials with a visit to the treasured turf of St James Park!
It’s a round trip of 12,000 miles just to spend an hour-and-a-half watching United play Brighton.
Ivan, I must explain, is a fully paid-up member of the 4,000-strong Hong Kong Magpies’ Supporters Club and has just forked out a whopping £300 so that he could meet his hero Alan Shearer I accompanied United’s finest to the former British colony on a flying trip to promote Wallsend Boys Club HK, the Hong Kong branch of England’s most famous star makers, who produced Shearer himself, of course.
The glittering centre-piece of Alan’s visit was a dinner at the plush Hong Kong Football Club where Ivan and 14 others from United’s supporters club who had saved up for VIP tickets met the Geordie superstar.
Such is the worldwide appeal of Shearer that for the first time ever such an event held at the football club sold out with 540 folk packing the place.
Basic tickets cost £100, with scores of VIPs shelling out three times that price, and the auction, conducted magnificently by Geordie whirlwind Graeme Forster, raised a mindboggling £130,000.
Part of that will be used to spread the name of Wallsend Boys Club by helping under-privileged Chinese kids get into a soccer system that is over-subscribed and requires big money. This was Shearer mania but then the whole trip brought an unbelievable reaction wherever he went.
“I began supporting Newcastle in 1995 at the height of the Entertainers just as Alan Shearer was joining us for a world record fee,” enthused Ivan Sum. “I’ve never wavered in my devotion ever since.
“Now to be going to Newcastle to see my team play is a dream come true. My girlfriend agreed to it all so we are flying a couple of days after Christmas to watch United against Brighton on December 30.
“Usually I watch them live on television in the Trafalgar pub here in Hong Kong. All our supporters club do. We go in our black-and-white shirts and cheer ourselves hoarse.
“Alan Shearer coming to our city is awesome. I simply had to meet him. Not just be in the dining room with 500 others but meet him personally upstairs, shake his hand, get his autograph, and have a selfie taken.
“He is a Geordie hero. Fifteen of us were able to afford the tickets after saving up and it has been worth every one of the 3,000 HK dollars.”
Supporters Club chairman Edwin Chu confirmed: “We are growing in numbers and enthusiasm. Maybe other Premier League clubs win more trophies but Newcastle are special because of the fans, the packed stadium and the incredible passion.”
Shearer has seen much as he has strode the globe for club and country, but even he was taken aback as we spent five days of the international break criss-crossing Hong Kong.
He was followed by a CNN television crew who were making a documentary on our trip to go global, was awarded an honorary membership of the prestigious Hong Kong FC and is already on the honours board in gold inscription, and was engulfed by enthusiasts throughout a Happy Valley race night.
“It was incredible,” Alan told me with a shake of the head. “The work my old boys club are doing is magnificent and was matched by the response of the folk, both Chinese and ex-pats, scores of whom were Geordies.
“I’m used to attention but this was
non-stop from the moment we got off the plane after a 14-hour flight to be met by excited fans to the night we left. It was non-stop meet and greet.
“There seems to be Geordies in every corner of the world and we met most of them.
“However, I don’t mind. The time to worry is when no one knows you or no one cares.”
I too was gobsmacked to see countless eager faces at the barrier as we arrived in Hong Kong blearyeyed. Many decked out in Magpie plumage ... there were even a couple of Steven Taylor and Jonas Gutierrez shirts among the milling crowd. Shearer was in HK when Gazza was famously caught sitting in a dentist’s chair swilling the hard stuff back in 1996.
England returned home to critical big headlines but bonded in the face of adversity to storm through the European Championships with Shearer the tournament’s top marksman. Here he scored again.
HK vice chairman Neil Jensen, working in finance after leaving Tyneside, underlined the Shearer impact.
“We knew we had a special person on our hands but what happened was beyond our wildest dreams,” said Jensen.
“Alan never turned down a request for an autograph or selfie and there were hundreds of them from first thing in the morning to last thing at night. The PR for Wallsend was immense.
“And financially the tour broke all boundaries. The auction alone raised £130,000 – sterling not Hong Kong dollars. That’s without ticket sales, sponsorship and other events we organised. “Of course we have considerable expenses to bring over such a show but it will keep us going here in Hong Kong for the next three years o r so. Not that we intend to rest on our laurels.” Three old Wallsend Boys Club members at Station Road are the brains behind an ambitious and rapidly increasing Hong Kong operation – ex-Southampton and Leicester City flier Tony Sealy, ably supported by top businessmen Neil Jansen and Chris Vale. Our travelling party was completed by former Wallsend BC, Newcastle United and Gateshead defender John Watson, who was joined by one-time Magpie loanee striker Ian Baird, now assistant manager of Sutton United. Auctioneer Graeme Forster, a fulltime firefighter with Durham & Darlington Fire Rescue Service with whom I’ve worked on the chat-show circuit over many years, has become a valued friend of the boys club.
“I do a lot of shows all over the place, but the sheer volume of fans hounding Alan every minute of the day tells you how popular a footballer he was,” said Forster.
“Naturally, this has been the most lucrative auction I’ve ever conducted. I opened the bidding for a Liverpool shirt at 20,000 HK dollars and a guy just said ‘I’ll give you £10,000 and that was it.”
When Shearer at last had to make his long farewells, Chris Vale, another Geordie working on the Wallsend image in Asia, told me: “This has massively strengthened the friendship between two countries and cultures.
“Premier League football is hugely popular out here and we’ve just had its top scorer and Newcastle United’s top scorer giving of his valuable time on our behalf.
“We’ve had Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott over, and now to have had Alan flying the Tyneside flag has sent the name of Wallsend Boys Club reverberating round the city.”