I work in the shadow of St James’ Park.
My morning commute takes me there via Eldon Square bus station and nine times out of ten, I will walk along Percy Street and onto Gallowgate before turning onto the Boulevard. That one exception is usually when I need to visit the Tesco Extra at the bottom of Barrack Road, in which case I might head up onto Morden Street, then walk past the Strawberry.
Anyway, I digress. But I do so for a reason.
Yesterday, I didn’t need to visit the supermarket and yet, inexplicably, without thinking, my legs took me up towards the Strawberry.
I worked out what was happening. Subconsciously, I was being drawn to the south west corner of the cathedral, where the shrine to the Messiah was beginning to take shape.
I never met Kevin Keegan. I clearly didn’t know him personally and yet, I was overcome by emotion as I stopped to pay my respects.
The time was just past seven am, there were a few individuals milling about and the TV cameras were setting up. “Christ”, I thought to myself, “If they single me out and ask me to comment, I won’t be able to get the words out.” I was that choked.
If all this sounds a tad bizarre, fair enough, because if someone was explaining this to me, I’d probably think, “get a grip, man.” And yet, here I am explaining this on The Mag.
In the immediacy of Keegan’s death and when the Editor asked a few of us to comment, I cast my memory back to that gorgeous August day in 1982. It was quite unbelievable that King Kev as we would soon christen him had chosen to play in the black and white of Newcastle United.
My first experience of St James’ Park had been the 3-1 reverse against Brighton and Hove Albion three years earlier, a day when the Seagulls gained promotion to the top flight. Seeing your team lose on your debut isn’t great, but the consolation prize was that Brighton’s win on Gallowgate was enough to ensure the Mackems missed out.
I attended that Brighton match with the old man. I genuinely cannot recall him taking me there that often before the arrival of King Kev and by the time of his debut against QPR, I was making my own arrangements with my mates, locked out that day, but becoming a regular when attendances settled down somewhat; Middlesbrough was our next home match and ‘only’ 27,984 were at that one.
This has had me wondering though.
Would my enthusiasm for Newcastle United have been any different were it not for Kevin Keegan? Funny, because I’ve never really contemplated that before.
The old man followed the toon, as did my older brother, so it was inevitable that I would. By the time I was old enough to get my head round what it all meant, we had been to two Wembley finals in the 1970s and qualified for the UEFA Cup. Not too shabby, until you understand we lost both cup finals and came unstuck on the continent against an outfit that plied their trade on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
King Kev made us believe, both as a player and when he was in the hotseat at SJP.
As a player, he got us back to the big time, promoted in third place at the end of the 1983/84 season and before the need for play-offs. The trips to Maine Road, Ewood Park and Leeds Road in that incredible run in will stay with me forever.
But as a manager, King Kev saving us from relegation to the old third division in that 1991/92 season was surely the most impactful. Back-to-back wins in the final two matches at home to Portsmouth and away at Leicester prevented Newcastle United from slipping into oblivion.
If that sounds dramatic, it’s meant to.
The following season, the Premier League was launched whilst United strolled to promotion as champions of the second tier under Kevin Keegan.
Issue 51 – May 1993
A year later Newcastle United was part of that whole new ball game and the season after that we should have won the thing.
And this is what’s more than a bit curious.
We finally got the monkey off our back by winning our first domestic trophy in seventy years just fifteen months ago. During those preceding seven decades, even Kevin Keegan couldn’t guide us to any domestic silverware, and yet, given the tears and the outpouring of grief these past couple of days, you’d think he’d won us the lot.
That adulation doesn’t stem from the silverware Kevin Keegan amassed; it cannot. Instead, it stems from the fact that KK was an absolute diamond, a thoroughly decent fella, a man of principle and integrity and whose roots were in the North East where his father hailed from.
Kevin Keegan is an absolute legend.
He was wor Special K.
RIP King Kev.