Watching Newcastle win a trophy in the city centre: ‘I’m over the moon for Kevin Keegan’

It was 18.19 in the Hotspur pub on Percy Street, Newcastle, a big Dan Burn header away from St James’ Park and a bar always laden with Newcastle United fans. It was 18.19 when the giant screen showed eight minutes were to be added 270 miles south at Wembley stadium.

“Eight!” said everyone with an exclamation mark. “Eight!”

“Eight!”

Yes. Eight.

A shiver of nerves shook itself around the packed pub. It was 18.19 on a Sunday in March 2025; it was also 18.19 in May 1955 and everyone knew it.

Until that moment, the Newcastle United faithful here displayed the same discipline as the line of black-and-white shirts spread across Eddie Howe’s midfield. Seventy years of waiting for a major trophy required it.

There had been outbursts of joy, of course, when Burn gave Newcastle the lead and when Alexander Isak doubled it. But Newcastle fans have got ahead of themselves before and there was a determination not to this time. The temperature-smart fans’ website nufc.com told everyone on Sunday morning: “We usually mark days like these with a rallying call but today feels different. We all know our jobs and the role we can play.”

It was a team talk being adhered to, if not everywhere, certainly here in a city centre bar where, when Kevin Keegan was managing gloriously in the 1990s, the place would fall into reverential silence when he appeared on television. It is a bar where John Tudor, decades after his last match, was still sung about:

“Hallelujah, John Tud-ah, John Tud-ah.”

It is one of the great football chants. Tudor died last month aged 78. He played in the 1974 FA Cup final — lost to Liverpool. There will be Newcastle United diehards remembering men like Tudor last night and this morning.

“Eight!”

Then Liverpool scored. Or did they? There was a collective wince when the replays showed Federico Chiesa was onside. “He’s onside,” everyone muttered. “He’s onside.”

Some of the opinions previously expressed regarding Liverpool players had been less gentle. Darwin Nunez? “Just a s*** Andy Carroll.”

Nothing was being taken for granted. Nick Pope’s save from Curtis Jones at 2-0 was cheered almost as loudly as the goals. When Pope caught an aimless Liverpool cross on 87 minutes, it was the same again. But still no euphoria. All was on hold.

It was that kind of afternoon. In the window of Fenwick — Newcastle’s signature shop, where many have threatened to expose themselves should a trophy be won — a black and white merchandise display came with the message, “We don’t do quiet.”

But deserted roads said otherwise. Northumberland Street, the main drag, was empty, silent. As the second half began, Robel, a food delivery driver from Eritrea, was watching the game on his phone, the Arabic commentary audible 30 yards away. He was smiling. No one was ordering.

A former Newcastle United manager in the 1980s, Jim Smith, once talked about his formative experience in the most northern city in England, a city of football and ongoing football failure. Smith, from Sheffield, called the “serious yearning” he encountered tangible. He wondered how some of his Newcastle players could perform in such an environment and understood why some could not.

But Isak and Bruno Guimaraes and Burn cost the guts of £120million ($156m). These are serious footballers.

And this is a club owned by the silencing autocrats of Saudi Arabia. It’s an underdog story; it’s hardly an underdog story.

Down from Fenwick is the Tyneside, Newcastle’s arthouse cinema. It was showing the match live. The Johnson family — Margaret, David and Peter — were in there with their friend, Linda Johnstone. The quartet have 185 years of watching Newcastle between them. “Les Ferdinand’s debut was my first match,” said Linda. That was 1995.

“Eight!”

Peter’s comment on this was, “It was 10, actually.”

David Johnson (left), Linda Johnstone, Margaret and Peter Johnson (Michael Walker/The Athletic)

His brother David had said to him at half-time: “We want this more, man for man we’re better.”

Indeed Newcastle were. But those 70 years.

“Everybody was tense,” said Margaret. “It was tense, it wasn’t raucous. You were watching the clock. But look at our fans at Wembley, their fans thought it was another day out, they’re used to winning. They expect it.”

Newcastle United fans of this generation, season ticket holders when they were not rich, do not expect this. “I never thought we’d live to see this,” David said.

Then, unprompted, he made a remark heard elsewhere last night: “I’m over the moon for Kevin Keegan.”

It says something about football, memory and age that, at these moments, the fan’s brain flicks from the here and now, from Dan Burn to the past. The Johnsons were without husband and father Ralph, the man who first took his sons to St James’ Park. David remembered his father saying, “Kevin has come to Newcastle.” They were all thinking of Ralph.

But also of Keegan, a man who, as a player and a manager, helped change how Newcastle United and Newcastle-upon-Tyne felt about itself.

“Kevin’s said he will come back and watch Newcastle as a fan in the ground when we’ve won a cup,” David said. “Well, we have. Let’s bring King Kev back. This ground, this club now, would not have happened without Kevin Keegan.”

“Eight!”

Substitute Joe Willock had the ball. He was running towards the corner flag. The time was 18.26 and locals were really beginning to think that an unidentified flying object in the distance might not be a bird or a plane, but a trophy.

William Osula and Willock celebrate victory at Wembley (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)

Some were thinking of running straight to St James’. John, 53, from North Shields, was there with his son Reggie, 16. “My first game was 1-1 v Swansea in the Championship,” says Reggie. They live in Dover and couldn’t get tickets for Wembley, so there was a 700-mile round-trip back to Tyneside just to be there.

“It’s not just watching the game,” says John. “It’s everything. I used to come here with me Dad. It’s special.”

They were standing on the Gallowgate steps, just above the statue of Jackie Milburn, whose header in the 1955 FA Cup final, a la Burn, sent Newcastle on their way to victory. Newcastle used to win trophies then, three FA Cups in five years. As a local newspaper headline had it in 1955: ‘Yes, It’s Newcastle’s Cup Again’.

Milburn’s statue had a scarf draped around it and lads taking selfies shouting “Jackie, man.”

“Eight!’

Newcastle fans celebrate outside of St. James Park #NUFC pic.twitter.com/WHpwDG5HXf

— FootballAwaydays (@Awaydays23) March 17, 2025

Willock won a corner. The Hotspur erupted. Willock will be able to go into that bar, and a few others, and point out that after 70 years and eight minutes, he won a corner that said the wait was all over.

And it was. Now there was euphoria, clasped faces and a couple of tumbles. Folk spilled onto the street.

Newcastle bus station is across the road. It was deserted, as it had been for hours. Bar one lone double-decker bus. It was the bus to Blyth, home of Dan Burn.

(Michael Walker/The Athletic)

It was the X8.

(Top photo: Michael Walker/The Athletic)

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