Wallsendmag

The bairn has just signed for Gateshead and along with all the training gear they've given him a season ticket as well (I'm sure kids go free anyway but it's the thought that counts!) and me and his mam get 25% off the admission price (£15 instead of £20) so he's asking if he can go to watch them on Saturday. If we do go it'll be the first time I've been to watch them play since around 1990 when I went to see them play Barnet and they had Barry Fry in the dugout. I remember him being more entertaining than the match.

It's also illegal not to put your seat belt on mate!

They sold 57k on the first day. The number will be far higher now. I calculate my chances of being successful for the Liverpool ballet at around 15%.

We were in Seaburn on Friday. Had fish and chips and the bairn played in the amusements for a while and noticed NUFC shirts outnumbered SAFC shirts. Not massively but definitely more people walking about in Newcastle tops. Always assumed Seaburn would be one of their most partisan areas as well.

It happens and if a lower league clogger has a chance of making a name for himself and winning the hearts of his teams fans it could happen. Remember Tranmeres approach last season or going back further the carry on we had with Grimsby when one of their players offered Shearer out in the car park afterwards? Sometimes these small irrelevant clubs sometimes aren't worth the hassle and Sunderland are as small time as they come these days.I'd rather not give them the much needed payday and small time in the limelight before they go back to obscurity.

Wouldn't be 15-0 (maybe 6 or 7 like!) but I'm not even arsed about sharing a pitch with them these days. They are becoming more and more of an irrelevance at each passing season, and as their sole aim would be just to kick anything that moves in black and white I don't think it would be much of a spectacle. Let them rot in lower league oblivion and we can concentrate on title challenges and Champions League.

Good to hear the atmosphere seemed to hold up, as it should have, late KO, first game of the season, 5-1 win etc. I watched it in a pub in Holland and it sounded and looked excellent on TV. In fact a couple of the Dutch lads I was sat with commented on not only the noise but also how good it looked with so many people in the stands wearing black and white. Talking to a lad at work this morning who stands in the Strawberry Corner amd he said it was unbelievable in there. Definitely gone up a few notches.

I'm the same. They can't touch us on ability and it woukd be a cricket scaore but one of their hatchet men could go down in mackem folklore by putting Bruno, Tonali, Isak out for the season regardless of the result. As someone said earlier they are getting to the stage where I check their score in the same way as I would Hartlepool when at one point I'd always keep a keen interest hopining theyd lose. I didn't realise they'd lost on Saturday until yesterday although tbf I was away for the weekend but even then I still managed to watch our game and knew all the Prem results. I suppose as our upward trajectory continues and the longer they stay in lower league oblivion the more the old rivallry will diminish, certainly from our side.

Thought they wanted to be like Udinese?

How's he managed that? It's physically impossible (I've tried it myself!) Assume he must have given a false date of birth when registering his account. Can't see any other way around it.

Aye I think it would have been canny to mix it up a bit and maybe have done it in the corner under the TV studios which is by far the biggest of the 3 corners and holds almost 3k. Strawberry Corner and NE Corner took care of themselves last season with the noise levels. Would have been good to get something going over there as well.

I really worry for the atmosphere this season. There'll simply be too many people sitting in areas that they don't want to be in, that they don't really belong in really! I'm not bothering on Saturday. The thought of £70 or thereabouts for tickets for me and the bairn to get stuck in a part of the ground I don't want to be in just didn't appeal so I'll watch on the telly instead. I'm as noisy as the next person at the match. I'm up out my seat all the time so last season, and the season before I would head straight for the Gallowgate Upper as that was where other likeminded fans would be and it was also fairly was to get 2 seats together up there. If I get stuck in the Leazes, and let's face it there's a higher chance of that as there's fewer season ticket holders, it just isn't the same and I wouldn't enjoy it. I just hope they can alter things so you can at least apply for a particular stand in the ballot. I'd rather get to 5 home games in the Gallowgate this season than 15 in the Leazes, unless it was the NE corner in the Leazes. Think I'd like it in there.

Just the 37k empty seats. Crewe took 2k with them as well.

Looks about 9k there. Only a tenner a ticket and a fiver for kids as well. If that's up here it's a 52k sell out no problem.

I reckon loads of season tickets will become available in the coming seasons when the likes of Joe Bloggs old £450 ticket on his Mike Ashley super saver deal becomes a £800/£900 one. I know a few long term season ticket holders who've said they'll call it a day if/when their season ticket price drops in line with the current match by match prices.

That's fair enough, people are entitled to their opinion and that's what makes places like this forum what they are but I'd argue with anyone that someone with 20, 30, 40+ years of regular, or semi regular attendance should be ahead in the queue of someone who just fancies it this season now it looks like we might be onto something big. The support and not to mention the £1,000s and probably 10s of £10,000s that the likes of me and many others have spent on supporting this football club all over the country and beyond over the past however many decades should count for something surely. It's great that the team are doing so well and that it's currently the hottest ticket in town so to speak but in might not always be like this, in fact it almost certainly won't be and that's why it's a dangerous game potentially locking out 1000s of regular match going fans in favour of those who have become interested now but may not always be the case. The fact that the club had all tbe information at it's fingertips to implement some sort of loyalty scheme but chose not to suggests that they're not really all that interested which is a shame.

The more I see and hear of this the more it becomes evident that this is a totally ill thought out shambles. When demand completely outstrips supply it's imperative that some sort of loyalty scheme is put in place so that those who have supported the club through thick and thin, whether that be through buying season tickets, memberships or just buying tickets for matches through public sale are looked after in some sort of way, certainly not lumped in with someone who just fancies a one off game because we're now good, or dare I say it an away fan chancing his luck by buying a membership because let's face it, we all now have the same chance. The annoying thing is that it would have been easy to do. Our loyalty or purchase history can be traced back decades or to when we first registered and were allocated a supporter number. Some of these folk on 150+ points have their purchase history included all the way back to the mid 1990s so it's all there. For me it should have started on a tiered membership like they do at the other top clubs in England where demand massively outstrips supply. When we applied for our memberships for this season our purchase history should have been looked at and just using a simple example you could have been put in a certain loyalty band, maybe Platinum, Gold, Silver, bronze, depending on your past purchase history with the club then allocate a certain % of tickets on sale to Platinum members, a smaller % to silver etc, etc. At least it rewards past loyalty in some sort of way instead of what we currently have which isn't really much use to anyone. Really hope that this is something the club look at going forward because eventually loyalty, match going fans of many years who are used to going along to support the team will become disillusioned into being forced to become armchair fans and will ultimately walk away.

Fair play you've trumped me there although in my defence I was still at school which made the midweek treks to Italy difficult! Think we also played Bari away as well? John the chap hitchhiked over to Italy I recall Went to the 3 home games v Leicester, Ascoli and Cesena. We were already knocked out by the time we played Cesena.

Was that not the other one v Ascoli? The reason for that is because I was on the pitch for that one after David Kelly got sent off, as were quite a few others!

I went to all the Anglo Italian Cup games. I was one of the 4,609 at SJP for the Cesena match. That's case closed.

Because that would be to the detriment of the atmosphere and that is one of the things that attracted them to the club. The unique fanbase it has. Aside from that you need to have a certain amount of family seating and thirdly the NE is not exactly awash with money so ultimately they could end up simply pricing people out. An expansion of the current ground up to 60/65k is still the best option by a mile.

Just seen Barry Sweeny, Liam Sweeneys dad, who was killed in the MH17 disaster has died after a battle with cancer.

Must depend where you were sitting. I was up Level 7 for the Semi Final and it was completely dead.

I'd genuinely rather watch it in the pub than go in the Leazes End. Used to hate it in there. Loads of people moaning and whining. I would come away depressed even after we'd won half the time. Was a soul destroying experience in there at times. If it's a changed place these days then fair enough. I exclude the NE corner from any criticism as it always looks lively in there and I'd be happy to sit in that particular section. Think I mentioned on here about my Level 7 experience v Southampton in the Semi Final last season. Only place we could get tickets for. The pub beforehand was brilliant, walking to the ground you could feel the excitement, got to our seats and it was so so flat. People sat playing on their phones only half interested in the match and zero atmosphere. I'd have enjoyed myself more if I'd stayed in the pub amd watched it there. We left our seats on 75 mins and walked down and around to the Gallowgate and as the gates were already open just walked in and stood in the Corner and watched the rest of the game from there which was a totally different experience. It actually felt like being at a completely different match. It hit home how much being in the right part of the ground for you can decide whether you enjoy yourself or not.

Totally agree. My younger formative years of watching NUFC were defined by which area I went in, as was the case for just about everyone. When my dad started taking me regularly back in the 80s our spot would be the very back of the old West Stand Paddocks and I would sit on his shoulders. Late 80s I started going with my mates from school and our area of choice was the Scoreboard. Other groups of lads from our school would either be in the Corner or the Leazes right up next to the away fans. Then in 1991 me and my dad got season tickets in the old family enclosure and in 1993 I moved to the new Leazes End where I stayed until moving to the Gallowgate in 2006 as the Leazes End had turned to shit. The Gallowgate is my area of choice still. I've sat in every other part of SJP and genuinely would rather watch the match on TV than sit in certain sections. They've turned it into a lucky dip really and that's not what going to the match should ever be about. I am glad they've scrapped randomly allocating any part of the ground as that would have stopped me applying for tickets altogether but this is still far from ideal. Surely instead of selecting by price category it would be easy enough to do it by stand instead.