Demoralising.
Found a pub to watch the game yesterday but watched the whole thing without getting animated even once. Might as well have been Hull v Southampton. Realised when Remy scored that I don't care anymore. Yeah I was hoping we'd get an equaliser, but even if we had I wouldn't have been jumping for joy. It was the same when Hull scored their third goal last week, my reaction was literally "Wow, nice goal."
Five years ago, hell even last year, I'd have been livid when that went in. Yelling at the TV, calling anyone within earshot a cunt, all of that irrational, emotional shit that makes sports worth watching.
I compare it with how I feel watching my NFL team, and honestly it's two completely different experiences. I still get mad, still jump for joy when we score a TD or make a big play.
Before one of my fellow NFL fans comes in and says "Yeah, well that's because your team are really good right now" I'm saying, hand on heart, that that's not it. I'd still care, even if they were struggling.
Why?
Because when I look at that team I see an organisation that is dedicated to being the best they can be, to giving me and the rest of their fan base their very best effort, every year, to winning.
Newcastle United?
I look at the club and see it being run by a bunch of odious cunts who treat their fans with utter disdain, who cut every corner to save every penny they can at the expense of being as good a football team as is possible. And it breaks my heart, it really does.
Newcastle was my first love, this should mean more to me than any other sport ever could. I still remember the absolute joy I felt when we beat Man U 5-0, the absolute agony I felt when Collymore closed in, how I lay in my room in tears when Graham Fenton stole the title away from us, how I lept around a PC lab in uni like a lunatic when Bellamy scored in Feyenoord. Even as recently as a year and a bit ago, chainsmoking my way through a horrible derby game against Sunderland in a dodgy little bar in Vietnam, then absolutely exploding when Shola bundled in an equaliser.
How can I care anymore though? We have an owner whose only goal is to advertise his other business, a director of football who belongs in a fucking cemetery, a manager who is delighted to go along with this rubbish while endeavouring to play as tedious a brand of football as is achievable, and a group of players who don't appear to give a single fuck about the badge on their shirt (one or two exceptions aside).
I doubt I'll ever be able to fully detach myself from NUFC, there's too much history there between us. But right now, I'm just so deflated by the whole experience of following this club. Barely post in the football forum anymore, gonna be home for a few months soon but have so many other things I'd rather spend money on than taking a trip over to watch us. I haven't been in St. James' Park in years, honestly don't know if I want to see in the flesh with all of Ashley's shit splattered across it.
It's taken a few years, but Mike Ashley and his band of horrendous men have taken the joy out if this for me. And they'd be proud of that, no doubt, so credit to them I suppose.
