Nineteen seventy-nine. What a year that was. We were rebels in seventy-nine. We spat, we smoked, and we had proper fucking football violence. The IRA were doing their best to blow us up and it was the year Maggie Thatcher hatched her plan to fuck the working classes.
But the thing that stood out most for me was…I went to my first Newcastle match. Well that’s not strictly true. What I mean is I went to my first match on my own.
To be honest it probably wasn’t the best season to remember. The year before we had been relegated from the old division one. So in came Bill McGarry and what seemed like twenty new players. It was probably closer to ten but we could have done with twenty. The start of the seventy-eight season had been the start of my whinging.
At first the answer was always no, but by Christmas time they were starting to soften up a bit. Seventy-nine started with a bang, it finished with one also. If your name’s Mountbatten that is. We were hearing about the winter of discontent and all that bollocks, when in all honesty I had been a tad discontented the fucking summer before. The Mags had a bad start to the season but then picked up again before a horrible fucking four-one drubbing off the Mackems at home and you could see where the year was heading. But to my pleasant surprise, Dad agreed to let me go to a game with the lads from my estate.
My life was complete. I was a proper Geordie boy now. Fucking next thing you know I’d be getting hairs on my balls. The next game up for the Mags was Crystal Palace at our place. They were flying high under a cockney wanker named Terry Venables. It was a sort of no lose game, we weren’t getting promoted that was for sure. So we could either take the cockneys scalp, or if they beat us it would fuck up the Mackems promotion push.
Saturday the seventh of April and, as I recall, the Southall riots were kicking off and lets just say immigrants weren’t welcomed the way they are now. The poor fuckers playing football had it the worst of all. Fucking thousands of people throwing bananas and making monkey grunts. They had some balls those players. They will always get my respect.
After securing a ten pack of number six I proceeded on towards the park to meet the lads. There was about thirty of them already in the park, some were drinking others just felt-tipped the swings and roundabout. I’m not getting into names here, so ages will do. The age range of our group started at ten years old, that was me, and went up to about the early twenties. Football violence was at a high and you could actually mix it up then without being a television star. Mind you the coppers were also having a piece of the action. I swear they liked it as much as us. I suppose if nothing else it gave them a bit of practice for the miners.
The older lads started to make a move for the bus, all the younger lads followed suit. What a fucking great day this was going to be. I really felt like a hard bastard sitting on the bus. I had spiked my hair up and got some lager off one of the bigger lads. I remember Gloria Gaynor was number one at the time with ‘I will survive.’ In fact when I think about the music back then no wonder we were all fucked up. The fucking Village People singing about the Navy, another song about rabbits by some cunt with a mop of curly hair.
Thank God for the Sex Pistols. Although they had already lost Sid, and Johnny had pulled out of the band, they were still charting on a regular basis. But the song of the moment was ‘Friggin in the Riggin’ and it was shouted on the terraces. The Jam were kicking around but I never liked them then, although I do now. Fuck me I’ve started now, remember fucking Racey, what a bunch of nobs they were. But there was some good stuff around, like The Skids and The Buzzcocks, ‘Everybodys Happy Nowadays’. Could you ever get further from the truth than that song title?
And then there was Kate Bush…who fucking cared about her music, she was a schoolboy’s dream.
We piled off the bus and proceeded to upset as many old codgers as we could. Knocking their flat caps off their heads and the likes. Then it was on to the hamburger vans. Not the big fuckas you see now. The little white carts where everyone said the sellers pissed in the onions. Who cares? They were fucking gorgeous and you could piss off without paying. We did our usual stint of thieving on the way to the ground. I managed a big pair of red laces for my Doc Martins and a porno mag from the newsagents.
It turned out to be quite a good day for breaking the law. I managed to nick over the fence at the back of the Gallowgate. Then it was up to the open-air pisser and drunken blokes falling all over the place. Some big cunt in a black and white kilt and a pair of oxblood Doc Martins was standing next to me at the trough. He was firing this piss in from about three feet away and I was catching his spray on the front of my red strides.
“Oi man cunt, watch where ya pissin.”
I should have known there was a slap on the way. Fucking scudded me right on the back of my head. So I started up the stairs and into the back of the Gallowgate. I remember looking over to the Leazes End that had been extended that year. I tell you it looked fucking mint.
I hurled a bit abuse at a few faces I recognised in the crowd. Then pushed down to the front to nick some Chipmunk crisps off the vendor. There was a few surges in the crowd and a few whispers that some of the Palace fans were in our end. Every fucka looked nervous as we were all under suspicion of being a cockney. Then some fucka said they were all soft shites and wouldn’t have the balls to come in our end and the tension dropped. Let’s face it they weren’t exactly Millwall were they.
The teams took to the pitch and started to warm up. Well they stood and fucking chatted. Then it started. The match was a dreadful affair. Venables had them playing all behind the ball to preserve their fucking promotion push. I bet the cunt just stood in the dressing room and said “Don’t get beat.”
Back in those days it was only two points for a win so a draw was a good result. The first half ended with a few scuffles in the crowd. Mostly our own lads just pissed up. I managed meanwhile to steal three pound as the crowd surged forward. Some big Mohican in front of me should have been more careful where he kept his money. I dodged along a few people so as to not get a whack if he discovered it was gone.
The second half was heading a similar way to the first. Palace, were giving us nothing and when we did get the odd pop at goal their keeper, was in fantastic form. Then for me the worst thing ever happened. There was about ten minutes left to go and I was busting for a piss. I fought my way to the back of the Gallowgate and then down the stairs to the pisser. I was mid flow when the noise level increased. We were on the attack.
The noise got steadily higher, and then all of a sudden there was silence.
I swear I heard the fucking net shake as the crowd erupted and Newcastle took the lead. I was fucking devastated that I had missed the goal, but I never told anyone afterwards. Some of the older lads were going on the piss, so us young-uns just headed back to the bus stop and made our way home. I tell you this; it’s the greatest day of your life watching your team as a true supporter. I only wish some of the weak as piss fans we have now had done the same.
None of this “Excuse me you’re in my seat,” bollocks. You would have got nutted at the very least for that sort of shit. Yep, the game is missing a few characters at the minute, but so are the terraces. Not to worry though, there were still a few things that year to come. Like Thatcher quoting St Francis of Assisi when she gained power and ‘The Pistols’ releasing ‘Who Killed Bambi.’
Oh and I nearly forgot about Brighton fucking us over three goals to one. Which unfortunately meant Sunderland didn’t get promoted…
I tell you what man. The seventies were fucking mint…
© Will Diamond 2009