Morning walk. Sunny in Whitley Bay, thick fog in Cullercoats🤷🏻‍♂️

54 years on from from first seeing Benfica and the great Eusebio at St. James’, we meet again tomorrow night. Gone are the days of 5p for a programme but I will still be buying one. Really looking forward to the game. Photo courtesy of Evening Chronicle

Biggest difference for me today from previous seasons was watching our subs warm up. No Wissa, Hall or Livramento but when we needed to make a change it was really encouraging to see probably the strongest bench in many years. Competition for places continues to grow.

Belfast football with Newcastle links planned this weekend. Friday night watching Tommy Cassidy’s first club Glentoran v Portadown. Saturday watching the great Bill McCracken’s first club Distillery v Moyola Park Sunday watching Willie McFaul’s first club Linfield at Cliftonville

Comfortable win tonight, Tonali and Burn everywhere. Biggest surprise for me was before the game, seeing Sir Les in some rascal clobber talking with Andy Cole

I noticed this on the wall of a football bar in Belfast over the weekend, Dick Keith for the home side and Sir Bobby Robson for England

On Friday we watched Glentoran beat Portadown. A young Tommy Cassidy only played 14 games for them scoring 7 including a cup final hat trick before Newcastle snapped him up. Thanks to the club for the photos of him as both player and manager. Love the opponent wearing glasses!

We visited Lisburn Distillery for their game on Saturday. Interesting portrait of the great Bill McCracken hanging up in the clubhouse.

Nice write up from Lisburn DistilleryFC on our visit over the weekend. It’s a really friendly club with all fans welcome if you’re ever in the Belfast vicinity 👍

I might have missed this, is it common knowledge amongst Newcastle fans? Translated from Spanish site

Great night at Seaton Terrace club for the grand opening of the Ray Kennedy Suite. Lots of money raised for Macmillan Cancer support. I know the ribbons are the wrong colour but I can dream

Amongst Wor Jackie’s memorabilia at St. James’ is his Linfield League winners medal 58/59. Doing some research and I love the line “he scored at a pace not normally seen in Irish league football” Jackie is on this video, 13 minutes in on why he came home youtu.be/PhlTMKL98BU?si…

Just got this message from mates who have travelled over to Oz for the cricket 😀

The future is bright

Excellent family lunch in Newcastle today, fully endorsed by Sandro 👌🇮🇹

Tricking the St. James’ grass in to thinking it’s in Dubai 🌞

I love picking the grandaughter’s up after school, but it does have one downside, it plays havoc with my Spotify playlist recommendations. Apparently I’m now in the top 6% of global Taylor Swift fans 🤷‍♂️

48 Teams in this World Cup! I’m glad I was a young un in 1970 when only 16 teams to complete my Soccer Stars book. Kids will need a mortgage to fill a book now

King Kev - what a man, what a manager... 😂❤️ #NUFC

Stopped for a coffee in North Shields this afternoon. I love art portraying our heritage and I bet Albert had some great stories