Bizarre attitude.
I was born and bred in Newcastle, but though my mother was a Geordie, my father had spent his school years in Liverpool and he was a Liverpool fan. So there was an element of choice in our family right from the start, given that dad relentlessly propagandised for the scousers, who pretty much always had a better team than us. My mam didn't care about football at all. Still, it was my dad who first took me and my brother to SJP, and Newcastle is the team we both ended up supporting. I remember refusing to watch the 1974 cup final with my dad, and stayed away from the house as long as I could after the game. Still got a lot of stick when I finally crawled home on Sunday evening, however.
Meanwhile, I don't see how anyone can criticise someone who comes from a place without a team for choosing to support Newcastle. We should welcome their interest. If we don't, they just be spending their cash on one of our rivals. Personally I find the current situation more depressing, where hardly anyone outside of the UK seems to have heard of us anymore.
As a Geordie who's spent his adult life either in London or abroad, I'm always glad to see foreign supporters. Trying to follow our fortunes in Sky pubs is, in my experience, a thankless and lonely task. If we're on telly, we're either playing one of the "big four", in which case the pub will be full of glory-hunters in red or blue, or else we're playing some smaller team, in which case most people will be cheering on the "underdog" -- and we're never the underdog.
I was in Lisbon when Gullit took over. I remember travelling all the way to Cascais, 40-minute train journey, just to watch the match at an "English" pub. The place was full of scousers on holiday, and I had a right miserable time as Owen banged in goal after goal. Remember his rubbing his hands? I was the only one who wasn't cheering. And then a 40-minute ride back into town.
Earlier that year, though, I was in Budapest, where I watched the cup final in an "Irish" pub. The place was packed with Arsenal supporters, neutrals -- and me. Some woman behind me kept shouting "Cheat! Cheat!" in a Felicity Kendall accent whenever Shearer appeared on screen. I wanted to turn around and slap her. And then there was some kind of mangled chorus of "Geordie Boot Boys" from the back -- a bunch of Hungarians from (I learned later) a town about 40 miles away, who travelled all this way in full Toon regalia. I could never figure out why they were supporting us -- they couldn't even speak any English -- but I was glad to see them. Their presence was the only thing that cheered me up that day.
