Atmosphere - when St James’ is at its best - part 1

Wallace Wilson reflects on the days and nights when Mags raise the roof

That was some atmosphere against Arsenal the other night wasn’t it. 40-odd thousand beered up, radgy Geordies gannin’ their ends, aggression and defiance pouring down from all areas of the ground. You could see the Arsenal players thinking “What sort of hellhole have we landed in here?”.

It got me thinking about other similar occasions I’ve experienced at St James’ Park over the years. I’m not going to try to rank them because it’s both pointless and impossible but I thought I would write about the home crowds (away crowds are a different animal altogether!) I have had the pleasure of being in over the years since I started going to matches over 60 years ago.

The first that springs to mind is Newcastle United v Bolton Wanderers on Good Friday, April 16th 1965. We’d been relegated four years previously and Joe Harvey had refashioned a team in his own image - hard working, no nonsense battlers who could play football when it was absolutely necessary. We were top of the Second Division and Bolton were third. If we beat Bolton we were promoted, it was as simple as that.

Officially there were 59,960 in the ground but that was a conservative estimate - kids being passed over turnstiles after the operator was slipped a few bob, that sort of thing. The old West Stand (where the Milburn is now) was the only seated area in the ground, and it could only accommodate 4,680 so we effectively had at least 55,000 standing supporters wrapped around three sides of the ground, with hundreds of small children, including myself, sitting on the cinder track around the pitch.

A 3 pm kick-off meant that people had plenty time to lubricate their throats and the guttural roar that greeted the teams coming on to the pitch was definitely the loudest thing I’d ever hear in my 11 years.

Bolton were a good side, with Wyn Davies and Francis Lee in the team, but it felt like it was inevitable that we would triumph and return to the First Division where we belonged.

Goals from Willie Penman and Jim Iley sealed the deal and the crowd invaded the pitch at the end from all corners of the ground. The players came into the Directors’ Box and threw their shirts into the crowd. I think they knew who had made the difference.

The next game I think would qualify for entry into any list would be the night we beat Rangers 2-0 to get into the Fairs Cup Final in 1969. Rangers had come down en masse and there’d been bother most of the day in the city centre.

They’d been given the whole of the Gallowgate and there was an air of violence floating around the ground. I was in the Leazes and my Dad was in the Gallowgate Paddock which was the target of a hail of empty beer bottles being thrown by Rangers supporters.

We’d managed to secure a hard fought 0-0 at Ibrox the previous Wednesday, thanks to a brilliant defensive display, the highlight of which was a penalty save by Iam McFaul, so it was all to play for. After an even first half full of ‘robust’ challenges we started to get on top in the second half as Wyn Davies and Jackie Sinclair exerted more influence on the game. Jim Scott broke the deadlock in the 52nd minute and the game was settled when the Mighty Wyn headed down to Sinclair to volley home our second in front of the Rangers supporters. They went off it.

Play had already been disrupted twice by objects being thrown on the pitch but Sinclair’s goal was the final straw for the ‘Gers supporters and thousands invaded the pitch. It looked as if they meant to charge the Leazes but Northumbria’s finest held a line on the halfway line, reinforced by barking dogs.

Both sets of players and the officials fled to the dressing room. The police gradually regained control, pushing the Rangers fans back into the Gallowgate where a solid line of officers were stationed behind Iam McFaul’s goal..

After a 17 minute break the players and officials returned to the pitch to resume the game. It was anticlimactic as the Rangers’ players seemed to have lost heart and the remaining time was played out.

Questions were raised in the House of Commons and there was a Government Inquiry into supporter hooliganism but at the end of it all, unbelievably, we were in a European Final!

There we faced Ujpest Dozsa, who had beaten a great Leeds United side in the semi-final causing their manager, Don Revie, to acclaim them as the best side in Europe. The first leg took place on 29th May 1969, after the end of the regular season.

At this time, there was no pre-match music unless you hand the Band of Guards playing on the pitch. The Leazes End led the singing in the ground and it usually started about an hour beforehand, the sound channelled onto the pitch by its tin roof. The Leazes was a bear pit, with different Aggro Boys groups just as likely to be fighting each other as opposition supporters.

The song was “You’ll Never Take The Leazes” or if a visiting supporter was being escorted out the ground, “Hoy him in the Leazes”. It was a pretty lawless place because police found it incredibly difficult to get through the crowd to arrest anyone causing ‘bother’.

It was the place to go if you wanted to sing and fight, or just fight…

May 29th was different though as, for the first time I can remember, the whole ground was singing. Ujpest lived up to Revie’s description during the first half where they contained our forwards and looked dangerous when they had the ball.

As the teams came out in the second half the noise in the ground reached another level as if 59,234 supporters realised they had to raise their efforts to challenge the team to do the same. When skipper Bobby Moncur responded by scoring his first ever goal just after half-time the opposition started to wilt.

A second by our captain and a third from Jimmy Scott ensured we took a handy 3-0 advantage to the away leg in Budapest which eventually just proved too much for ‘the best team in Europe’ to recover.

Fairs Cup nights against the giants of Europe were always a great event, with the crowd realising that our team needed their full-throated support but it is a domestic cup game that springs to mind next.

1974 provided our best FA Cup run since we won the cup in 1955. To be frank, our record in the competition had been terrible, never making it past the 4th round since 1961 and suffering defeats at the hands of the likes of non-league Bedford and H******d U****d along the way.

So when we beat West Brom 3-0 away, inspired by Jimmy Smith, in the 5th round we started to dream once more. A 6th Round home tie against second division Nottingham Forest suggested that this could be our year.

But with Newcastle United there is always a twist. Forest belied their status as 2nd Division also rans by taking a deserved 2-1 lead into half-time and, when Pat Howard was sent off for disputing a penalty decision we were soon down to 10 men and losing 3-1.

The incident set the crowd alight and it wasn’t long before a few hundred supporters left the Leazes End to show their displeasure. The ref took the players off the pitch for 8 minutes but the crowd were still incensed and the noise levels with the ground increased when we were awarded a penalty after Supermac was pushed in the box and Terry McDermott pulled us back to 2-3.

Three minutes later and the place was going mental as John Tudor’s diving header pulled us back to 3-3. By this time Forest were shaking and a minute from time a Macdonald header across the box was swept in by captain Bobby Moncur to win the tie 4-3.

That wasn’t the end of the matter, however, as the FA ruled that the pitch invasion had materially affected the game and ordered a replay at Goodison Park.

It actually took two replays for us to get through to a Semi-Final against Burnley at Hillsbrough.

I’d only started going to St James’ Park 11 years previously so this sort of success felt normal. I would receive a rude awakening over the next few years, of which, more shortly.

WALLACE H WILSON