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Internationals (Club v Country) – Do Newcastle United Fans Care?

It’s been a hot topic in the North East for as long as I remember.

Are you club or country first?

Do you care about England?

Do you support England?

Do you watch England?

Club, not really, not really, sometimes. The thing is, it never used to be like that.

My oldest memory is watching Italia 90 with my parents and younger sister in a darkened front room. I was 10 years old. I remember the noise from the crowd during the World Cup Quarter Final between England and Cameroon on our small, fuzzy pictured, TV. I remember screaming and jumping for joy when Gary Lineker scored his penalty with minutes to go – I can still to this day revisit this moment in my head and get a tiny twinge of that unadulterated joy I felt. I remember crying with Gazza during the Semi Final when he realised, should England win the game, he would miss the World Cup final. I remember the missed penalties and the pure heart wrenching feeling of being completely deflated when we were eliminated. I don’t feel that anymore and that is a sad thing.

England officially qualified for Euro 2016 during the international break, Rooney became England’s all-time leading goal scorer and it did not move me in any way. From the second the Arsenal game finished I was looking forward to the West Ham game. The international break is a distraction. I hate international breaks!

During Rooney’s heart felt speech in the dressing room after the game, thanking his family, his fellow professionals and coaches, I was more concerned about the morals and ethics around David Beckham’s son Romeo leading the England side out at Wembley as it was his 13th birthday – was it just me that had a “you what!” reaction to that?

I used to hero worship England players like Lineker, Barnes, Platt and Mark Wright (always loved him, not sure why!), their posters were on my wall, they were my most sought after stickers in my Panini World Cup and League sticker albums, I even asked my parents to buy me “Gary Lineker’s Golden Boots” on VHS for my birthday and used to study it for hours on end.

Now, I have developed a somewhat bitter, almost unhealthy, attitude to anyone in the England side . When I was a kid, the club side the player played for was irrelevant. I was an England fan, it was us against the world, I was proud, passionate and I cared massively. These days all I see an international break doing is giving a Newcastle United player the opportunity to injure themselves, and let’s face it, given our injury record over the last few seasons, our lot could do without this opportunity.

I am not sure if this is a personal thing or whether other fans feel the same way. Is it a Newcastle thing? A North East thing? A Northern thing? Could it be down to there being no Newcastle United players in the England squad?

Have Newcastle United had any English players who were worthy of a place in the squad in recent years? We’ve had Steven Taylor get a place in the England squad a while ago and, like Taylor, we’ve had a number of players regularly being picked for, playing in, and captaining, under 21 and youth England sides but none have pushed on to senior level yet.

Are the likes of Jack Colback (and potentially Adam Armstrong and Rolando Aarons in the future) good enough to make the senior squad? If Colback or any other Newcastle United player for that matter made the squad , would my feelings towards England change? I doubt it.

Euro 1996 was the last time I felt anything about England and I was 16 then. Perhaps England is best left for kids who have such an unbridled love of the game which adults simply grow out of? There will never be a shortage of the masses of invited corporate fans who feast on the free finger sandwiches, vol-au-vents and bottled lager, turning up to the second half thirty minutes late, just in time to grab their smartphone to record Rooney’s historic penalty go in. Maybe it is best left to the “lads” in their buttoned up to the top white polo tops with stone island jumpers, singing the national anthem solid for 95 minutes? Maybe it is for southerners who can realistically attend the game at Wembley on an evening?

Whoever it is for, it isn’t for me. Unless I have a bet on.