Looking back at previous comments elsewhere about commentators calling Man Utd “United” all the time during commentary and punditry its strange that they dont say the same when commentating on and analysing Newcastle Uniteds games, or any other Uniteds for that matter, I cant really figure it out to be honest and would love someone to explain it to me?
In fact we mentioned that Shearer should know better and the reason for that surely doesnt need expanding on, however, what a lot of people dont know is that John Motson, one of the biggest culprits, has got a couple of good reasons to know there’s more than one United as well ……. his debut commentary game was Hereford United v Newcastle United in 1972, the result of which has meant his “oh what a goal” rant will be heard every time the FA Cup 3rd Round comes round !!
And another little known fact about that giant killing result was that Manchester United were supposed to be the “featured” match that night on Match Of The Day but got put back for the Hereford United / Newcastle United game.
How ironic then that the 2 teams involved in that game were bot UNITED’S.
So anyway, moving on and anyone whose ever been to a Newcastle match will have heard the above song being sarcastically sang by the opposition fans, of course the fact that the majority of these teams have won less (if anything at all in some cases) than Newcastle United doesnt seem to have registered with these nuggets.
So when fans sing that particular song it doesnt wind Newcastle fans up at all, in fact it has the opposite effect because it makes the singers look like a bunch of k**bs !!
So why is that? Well, setting aside the hypocrisy of the chant, its also totally inaccurate historically as well !!
In fact , what a lot of people dont realise is that there is actually very few other English teams with a higher trophy tally than Newcastles
Just to clarify, Newcastle have won the League 4 times, the FA Cup 6 times, the European Fairs Cup once and a handfull of minor trophies like the Charity Shield, Texaco Cup, 2nd Division Championship and Anglo Italian Cups, not to mention “sort of” winning the Inter Toto Trophy !!
There are plenty of teams around who would be more than happy with that little lot in the trophy room.
Now no-one can argue you do have to go back a fair way to find their last major silverware but so what, history’s history and some clubs don’t have half the pedigree Newcastle United have so perhaps they should think twice in future and get behind their own team and stop singing a song which just makes them look like idiots.
So what else are Newcastle famous for, other than winning f**k all of course !
Probably one of the most well known things of course are the fans, no one can deny that Newcastle United have support that is the envy of all but a handful of top clubs, in fact they are apparently in the top twenty in the WORLD in terms of match day revenue !!
This massive level of support was amply demonstrated in the 2009-10 season when over 40 odd thousand turned up at St James Park every home game in the second tier of English football.
From a purely football perspective though probably the thing Newcastle United are most associated with is their love of a good centre forward, recent years have seen the likes of Mickey Quinn, Les Ferdinand, Andy Cole and of course Alan Shearer enjoy the hero worship bestowed on a goal scorer on Tyneside.
Going back in history they had Supermac, otherwise known as Malcolm Macdonald. Further back there was Albert Stubbins, Hughie Gallacher, Jackie Milburn (as seen below in statue form outside the Gallogate End) and Wyn Davies.
So anyway, enough about this particular United (who remember ran that other “United” pretty close for the Premiership title in 1995 and 1996) but if you want to find out a bit more why not go to a couple of other pages I’ve set up on here that look in a bit more detail at Newcastle United.
For example, for an overview of the badge and its history go HERE
We also havent mentioned Newcastles famous nickname, the reason being that we’ve set up a section on the Footybits site specific to football nicknames and the history of Newcastles is on there, you can get to these pages by clicking HERE