By European Football
May 3 2006

It’s the time of year when Gardening is forced upon me and my mind turns to almost anything else in order to save itself from shutting down prematurely. This morning while cutting the grass and considering the fact that there seemed rather a lot of smoke coming from the mower, my mind turned in the direction of my beloved Newcastle United.

I am a life long Newcastle fan, almost 40 or in Geordie years 374 and I can honestly say there is no where on the planet that I prefer to my beloved Tyneside.

Yes we have our quirks, girls go out wearing dental floss for skirts and lads in t-shirts during a force 9 hurricane, people that shiver mildly during a blizzard are considered a bit puffy, or potentially worse, Southern.

Although something does seem to happen to the old up here, usually the only sure way to detect a heat wave in the North East is that the old women on the bus have their top button on their coats unbuttoned.

But quirks aside, Geordies are for me the cream of planet earth, true you will never have to wait long for a Geordie to point out any failings you may have as a human being, but they are fine if you would like to point out theirs as well.

But there is one single nut in my otherwise perfect cornetto, and that is the continuing failure of my side to actually win anything.

Managers come and managers go, we come close and fall at the last hurdle, and managers speak darkly of the curse times not long after they arrive, often to be led, slightly greyer and prematurely bewildered, back to the home for ex-lepers, or wherever it is they go to nowadays.

But why should we be cursed?

Well here is my 2 penneth (or given inflation £17.20) it’s the Magpie, think about it. As far as I can gather the Magpie has always been considered a bird of ill-omen, so what do we do? We use it as a bloody mascot, that’s what we do.

Now why don’t we have two? We are called the magpies, plural for god’s sake and as the rhyme goes.

One for sorrow
Two for Joy.

Now obviously I am not entirely blaming the mascot, that would just be, well plain silly, but think about it, perhaps in a x-files type way the magpie is controlling the chairman, hence all the stupid decisions, I mean what other explanation could there possibly be.

Its not like he is a fat idiot now is it?
Oh well, ok I will give you that one.

But now as I leave to contemplate my future as a Geordie version of David Icke, I want you to consider this, what other club has a universal symbol of bad luck as its bloody mascot.