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Leeds365 Goes to Newcastle - England v Albania "On Wednesday 5th September 2001, football not only came home, but it quickly got cleaned and brushed up and went out for the night on the Toon. Having thrashed the Hun 5-1 in Munich, England played its next World Cup qualifying match against Albania at the best stadium in the land – St James Park, Newcastle. Not wanting to miss such a momentous event, the editorial team of Leeds365 obtained tickets and set off towards the Holy Land.
Arriving at the stadium we were confronted by a queue of a thousand or more faithful disciples, all waiting patiently to collect their tickets from the box office. Being assured (quite incorrectly) that kick off was due to be delayed by a member of the local constabulary, we settled down to some tedious shuffling as the queue slowly snaked its way along.
At approximately 8.20pm, having missed the first 15 minutes of the game (although fortunately no goals) we finally gained access to the huge Milburn Stand. Hurriedly ascending seven flights of stairs, stopping only at level 5 for oxygen, we arrived at the entrance to the top tier. It was at this point that we discovered that having tickets with clearly marked row and seat numbers had little relevance. The box office staff in Newcastle (bless them) had, when confronted with thousands of fans arriving to collect tickets (TicketMaster’s fault), managed to allocate duplicate tickets causing confusion to reign as people arrived to find people had already been given their seat. No matter, the ‘helpful’ stewards found us some empty seats and we settled in to watch the remainder of the match. The details of the match are, of course, history and are better covered by other, more ‘focused’ sites. Suffice to say that the highlights of the game were the reception that Robbie Fowler received as he replaced Emil Heskey, and his subsequent goal. Critics, reporters and armchair supporters please note that Robbie is one of the best goalscorers of his generation. Glowing with national pride, we capped off the night by toasting England’s position at the top of the qualifying group (by a huge goal difference) at the Forth – a great pub near the station in Newcastle, untouched by the current trend for spending millions of pounds turning perfectly good, popular pubs into bright, shiny ‘fun’ pubs serving dayglo piss in bottles to tossers. This was followed by a visit to a nearby takeaway for some fantastic food. All in all, this was a great night out. Problems with tickets were inevitable in light of the huge late demand caused by England’s anihalation of the old enemy. However, TicketMaster need to look carefully at their procedures – I talked to some fans who had ordered tickets months before the game and not received them by post as promised. This had put undue pressure on the staff at St James Park who, in fact, did a very good job of sorting out somebody else’s mess" - Danny Ponton (Lifelong Newcastle United Fan)
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