washing away the unclean

Its be about 2 and a half years missing in the premiership, and technically about 14 days worth of pure stress for me - but the return of the tyne and wear derby - aka Newcastle United v the unwashed mackems was on the fixture. Its always the time of the year, when bragging rights are available to the winners, and its 12 months (or longer) til you can at least get them back. I know there is the celtic / rangers, spurs / arsenal, man city / manure, milan x2 etc etc - but the end of the day - nothing is as big as this, there isnt any bigger rivalry between two sets of teams and fans.

Pippa was going to the match and after a couple of texts, you know she was going crazy in the head - and frustrated because the game wasnt over right then and there. The news that Owen wasnt playing was eating every geordie up around the world - and made the fight for 3 points even hotter than a hot thing in hotland.

Rich was on about putting a bet on - because it matters more when theres money on it - and I still dont really know if he did or not - although he was swearing and cursing at sunderland at full time. Rich turned up about 10 mins after kick off, and I was already panicing - sunderland made a harsh challenge on Emre in the first 30 seconds and they got a yellow card for it. Ameobi managed to score a powering header, only for the unclean to claw one back 90 seconds later, Ameobi scored a second (from a header again) - for yet again, sunderland to score again. This was truely an advert for english football, and certainly for the north east.

We were watching this from the Well, and normally everyone is pretty chatty to each other - however, the black and white shirts, kept well away from the red and whites - not even a nod, not even a smile within 2 hours - even at the bar, toilets or if someone needed to get past a table or chair. The 2nd half kicked off, and again, Newcastle dominated the game, with the return of solano and emre - our quality started to shine through, and then fantastic, Emre scoring from a free kick - in off the post - fantastic - 3-2 - this time, the geordie nation prayed that we could keep the unwashed away from our goal for the remainder of the game.

We were very luckly - the width of a crossbar (Elliot chipped Given for the ball to bounce back out) we were sailing home free, with 3 points safely tucked under our captain's hat. Our win took us to the top of the bottom half of the table, the unwashed heading back into the relegation zone. After all that happened at wigan last weekend - we needed this, not just for the league, not just for the club, but for the players, the fans and once again, to instantly shut up any gobby mackem scum who starts to mouth off.

Advantage : Newcastle