Tims 92

Newcastle United

St James' Park

Ground No. 39 (return visit)

Visited - Saturday 2nd April 2011

Result - Newcastle United 4-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers

Competition - Barclays Premier League

Attendance - 49,939

It’s kind of ironic that the site should be re-launching with a review of Newcastle, when it was taking pictures there back in 2004 that really got it started. It wasn’t planned, just how it happened to turn out with the fixtures, just one of those innocuous coincidences of life that you seem to notice along the way.

I’d enjoyed my first trip to St James’, even if Wolves had been relegated that day (it had been coming for so long that even the most melodramatic of fans weren’t going to be crying for Sky on that occasion), so was looking forward to going back, especially with the away end having changed from being stuck up in the gods in the corner, to a slightly better view behind the goal, albeit you still needed mountaineering skills to make the hike up to the top tier where we were located.

St James’ Park, or rather, SportsDirect.com @ St James’ Park Stadium to give it its full title, celebrated 130 years of football being played on the site at the start of the season, and the clubs return to the Premier League was a fitting tribute to bring it up to the level it deserved. It was a team called Newcastle Rangers who had first used the ground, having moved there from Gateshead in 1880, but more notably, Newcastle West End FC took it over in 1886 following Rangers’ demise in 1885, jumping at the chance to move back to the area, having been evicted from the adjacent Town Moor 12 months earlier when football was banned from there. The first FA Cup game took place at the stadium on the 18th January 1890 when West End were defeated 2-1 by Grimsby Town, and despite a second placed finish in the newly formed Northern League that season (losing out on the title only by goal difference), trouble lay ahead for the club, who two years later were forced to go cap in hand to their rivals across the city, Newcastle East End, and propose a merger. East End had turned professional in 1889, and whilst they had never quite reached the Northern League heights that West End did in that first season, they were considered a much more stable and bigger club, but it was the ground that was the key to them accepting, with St James’ Park laying right on the edge of the city centre, and more developed than their own Chillingham Road base. Technically speaking it was a takeover really, with West End wound up, and several players joining East End, who kept their name for the first few months following the deal, before changing to the now familiar Newcastle United in the December of 1892.

It was a move that helped unite the city, and from there their progress was swift, joining the Football League in 1893, and by the early part of the twentieth century, the club had become renowned as a prominent cup side, reaching five finals and a further semi-final to boot between 1905 and 1911. The bad news for fans of the Magpies was that that was where their luck tended to end, when they reached the final stage, losing the first three (including the 1908 final to Wolves), before finally claiming the cup as their own in 1910, beating Barnsley 2-0 in a replay at Goodison Park. This time could really be considered as their glory period, winning the league title three times as well in 1905, 1907 and 1909, and it was the money raised from this success that helped develop the ground, notably with the building of the ornate West Stand in 1906, that later became famous for its curved gable and giant letters on the rear that looked out over the city spelling the clubs name (see here). Sadly, come the mid 80s, the stand was condemned and replaced by a new design based on the Rous Stand at Watford, but even now the ground has changed beyond recognition once more.

Sitting high on a hill above the city, it’s visible for miles around, standing out as a landmark on the horizon for anyone coming into Newcastle, every bit as much a symbol for the city as the Tyne Bridge or the Angel of the North. The only remaining part of the old ground is the East Stand, which sits along Leazes Terrace, a problematic side of the site for many a year thanks to the listed Georgian buildings just behind it, but it is these that have given the stand a unique architectural style not seen elsewhere in the country. Built in 1973, part of the brief for the designers was to make it sympathetic to the rest of the street, and this was achieved with a coloured, textured facing to harmonise with the sandstone buildings opposite. The North and West sides of the ground now are taken up by a gargantuan L shaped stand which is clad in bright white steelwork and a battleship grey colour scheme that whilst perhaps not as charming as the old West Stand still have their own impact on the surrounds, and finally is the Gallowgate End, not quite as huge as its newer, shinier neighbours, but still an impressive size, and is the focal point of matchdays with the club shop and Shearers Bar having a throng of people buzzing around the outside of each.

We’d set out fairly early to head to up to Tyneside, and the journey had gone well, smooth going until nearing the city when the traffic started to build up, but with time to spare, we made it in and parked up before heading off to the Bodega for a pint and to meet a friend. A nice pub, it was unfortunately too packed to really appreciate its Victorian trappings, so we eventually headed to the ground and made our way in.

Immediately on entering you can see that changing the away section to behind the goal has made a huge difference, giving a much better feel for the ground than before. Still in the upper tier, the view isn’t one you’d choose every week, but it’s definitely better. The Sir John Hall Stand is two tiered (although you’d assume is much bigger with seven levels), and stretches around the North West Corner where it meets the Milburn Stand. Whilst at first glance the two stands might be a continuation of each other (and the upper tier is), the central section of this stand differs greatly, built at a shallower incline to allow for an extra level of executive boxes, leaving the fourth level of the North West corner standing above the seating to its right, Millennium Stadium-esque. Opposite is the Gallowgate End, once the tallest stand at the ground during the 90s, it has a cantilevered pitched roof, similarly seen on a smaller scale at Oldham, which helps to give it a traditional feel, albeit spoilt now by the intrusive advertising of Sports Direct. Finally is the East Stand, once two tiered, whilst it is the oldest stand at the ground, it too has seen work done to it, when the lower tier was re-profiled and executive boxes removed to create the single tier stand it is today. All in all, the two stages of redevelopment during the 90s, both at the beginning and end of the decade has seen the capacity raised to 52,000 making it now the fourth largest ground in England.

Heading to the game, whilst in a good mood, there was a slightly bad feeling that we never play well after an international break, and having had striker Kevin Doyle injured playing for Ireland, then there was an ill feeling amongst the travelling section of the crowd that wasn’t entirely sure whether the team could repeat the success at Villa Park two weeks earlier. In short, they couldn’t! The less said about the game, the better really. Newcastle took the lead thanks to some comedy defending that allowed Kevin Nolan to stride into the box unchallenged and have all the time in the world to fire past Wayne Hennessey. He was lucky to stay on the pitch though on 43 minutes when Adam Hammill punted the ball past him and had a clear run on goal and all the pace in the world to get there before being pulled back with no attempt to play the ball. Only a free kick and yellow card was given, and 60 seconds later it was a case to show kids everywhere that cheats do prosper when Nolan’s side went 2-0 up, albeit again, thanks to defending that Sunday League footballers could have bettered with ample opportunity to have stopped the ball ever getting to Shola Ameobi who headed home under little challenge from his marker.

If the break was a welcome opportunity to regroup, Mick to give an inspirational team talk and the lads to come out all guns firing in the second half, then it wasn’t taken, the game effectively killed in the 50th minute when Newcastle passed through the Wolves defence like a training ground exercise to find an unmarked Peter Lovenkrands having enough time to put down his half time cuppa, finish the page of the programme he was reading before tapping the ball in past Hennessey, the defenders arriving at the scene like fire fighters getting to the fire around about the time planning permission has been granted to rebuild a burned down house. So, 3-0 down, game over and we decide to start playing, Ebanks-Blake slotting in a pull back from Jarvis to make it 3-1, and with the introduction of Michael Kightly coming back after injury, the team looked buoyed, Steven Fletcher hitting the post with a header from a free-kick. If it had gone in, then who knows, the momentum seemed to be with us at that point, Ebanks-Blake had an effort cleared off the line, but it wasn’t to be and Jonas Gutierrez added a fourth in injury time to give the scoreline a daunting look for the away fans who had stayed to that point (and those who did had done so longer than the defence, who again allowed Gutierrez a free run, unchallenged, when most players would have taken the ball into the corner quite voluntarily at that stage of the game).

Leaving, disappointed after the abject performance, then we made our way home in good time, doing well to get back for 9pm and trying to get the game out of heads and religiously avoid Match of the Day!

Overall, ignoring the game, it had still been good to revisit the ground. You wouldn’t choose to sit there for every game, being way too high to really feel part of the atmosphere, let alone having a good view of the action, but it is an experience to visit it. Partly I think it’s that the stand has been built so steep and with such massively deep rows that makes you up in the gods, at 75 rows tall, it’s big, but not the biggest, both the Holte End (80) and Anfield’s Kop (76) have more, yet neither of those, especially the Kop, has the same leviathan type feel to them, and another bad thing that having such legroom and wide seats is that it does ruin the atmosphere of being more packed in (only football fans could complain of comfort!), still that seems the way that new developments are heading, Arsenal and MK Dons two examples, along with Wolves’ very own redevelopment, and it’s only a small thing to moan about. Some people call it the best ground in the country, I’m not so sure about that (all have their perks and interests to claim that title), but it’s certainly one of them.