How Newcastle 
became United
by Paul Brown
Goal Post, £10
Reviewed by Mark Brophy
From WSC 338 April 2015

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Popularly, Newcastle United were founded in 1892 and in a way they were, for that was when the current name was adopted. But the club existed before that under other names, Stanley FC and Newcastle East End. This is their story from the beginnings 11 years earlier until the first FA Cup win in 1910. Though the facts are known, the first part especially has had little presence in the popular mythology of the club. Even the latter part, taking in three League titles as well as the aforementioned FA Cup win in the Edwardian era, has faded into history a little, certainly in the mind of this fan.

It’s a story which travels between two extremes, the club moving rapidly from a bunch of teenagers playing on sloping wasteground to professionals playing in the country’s top division. Along the way we learn the “United” name was pure PR. It’s commonly believed East End merged with their main local rivals West End to form Newcastle United, but East End merely took over West End’s lease on St James’ Park after they folded. The decision to change the name was meant to placate both sets of fans. There’s physical movement too, the club’s home shuffling around the city’s east end until finally settling at its present location.

The chronological tale is hung off the author’s visits in the present day to the club’s five home grounds and surrounding areas, various museums and a local theatre. The latter trip is to experience something like the atmosphere of watching the first footage filmed of the club in action, as spectators who attended the game against Liverpool in 1901 would have done later that evening, and there is atmosphere aplenty in this book. An effort is made to identify with the fans of the time, which perhaps is easy for a resident of the city and fan of the club to do. But it wouldn’t be impossible for anyone from an industrial city who supports their local team, such is the sense of community and shared experience.

This is a story about football though, with plenty of heroes. Outstanding players, shrewd secretary/managers, all spring to our attention, not least Colin Veitch, the long-serving captain of the club through their greatest days and a polymath in both the sporting and more conventional sense. He was an innovator as well as a truly versatile footballer, playing all over the pitch for Newcastle, and the book calls him “arguably the greatest player in the club’s history”. He was also a committed socialist, a founder of both the players’ union and a still-performing local theatre company, an actor and a musician.

It’s difficult in the circumstances not to contrast the drive for success in the first decade of the 20th century on display here, “boundless in its ambitious aims”, with the inertia and cynical refusal even to try for it today. For all that, this isn’t about glory. The most successful period of the club’s history is covered in only two chapters. More important is the journey, where the club came from and how they eventually got there.

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How Britain’s greatest football manager was made at Aberdeen
by Michael Grant
Aurum Press, £18.99
Reviewed by Keith Davidson
From WSC 338 April 2015

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In September 1985, Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson was among the coaching staff when Scotland played Wales at Ninian Park in a tense World Cup qualifier. He was sitting next to national team boss Jock Stein on the bench. The paths of Stein and Ferguson had crossed many times over the previous couple of decades; as a friend and mentor Stein was a huge influence on Ferguson’s professional life. When the senior man collapsed towards the end of that game, then died in the stadium’s medical room shortly afterwards, it had a profound effect. It was Ferguson who shouldered the responsibility of calling Stein’s family.

This is not the only death to feature in Michael Grant’s book on Ferguson’s formative years. His first season as manager at Aberdeen was turbulent both on the field and off. Sacked by St Mirren in May 1978, he joined the Dons, launched an unfair dismissal claim against his former employer which he lost, had disagreements with some of the established players at Pittodrie and, crucially, his father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

During a bad-tempered away game at St Mirren, of all places, in February 1979 Ferguson’s father died in a Glasgow hospital. The news was broken to him after the final whistle. At the time the Aberdeen manager was still only 37 years old. This kind of detail is the strength of Grant’s book. There is evidence of Ferguson’s pathological competitive streak, there are quotes from his former players – sometimes revealing, sometimes funny – and an inevitable warm glow for any Dons-supporting readers as domestic and European successes provide staging points in the narrative.

What Fergie Rises provides more than anything else however is an explanation of what he had learned, and endured, by the time he joined Manchester United in 1986. When the call came from Old Trafford Ferguson had more than 12 years under his belt in football management with East Stirlingshire, St Mirren and Aberdeen. He achieved his greatest successes in Scottish football by instilling the belief in the Dons players that they could beat Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow, something Grant demonstrates comprehensively. Three League titles and other domestic trophies followed. When Liverpool humbled Aberdeen in the European Cup in 1980, Ferguson made notes. In 1981, holders Ipswich Town were dumped out of the UEFA Cup. By 1983, the European Cup-Winners Cup and European Super Cup had both been secured.

For those who have a one-dimensional view of Ferguson as the red-nosed grandee of the Sky era, Grant’s stories about his pragmatism and his willingness to learn from his mistakes – even to admit them – paint a fuller picture. An argument in the wake of a Scottish Cup tie in March 1985, for example, saw striker Frank McDougall punch Ferguson to the ground. The manager was canny enough to realise that the club’s top scorer had to stay in the side irrespective; a matter of weeks later the Dons retained the League title. Long before he joined Manchester United, Ferguson knew what it took to be a winner.

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