Rollercoaster

Thinking ahead to Sunday's game, I've been reminded of what proved to be the biggest single rollercoaster game of my Newcastle supporting life, which our match with Villa has the potential to eclipse.

On 13 November 2002, Newcastle went into their last match of the first Champions League group stage knowing that to stand any chance of progressing to the next round they need to beat Feyenoord in Holland, and hope that a Juventus team which had already qualified for the next phase would be sufficiently motivated to beat Dynamo Kiev.

Thanks to goals from Craig Bellamy and Hugo Viana, Newcastle got themselves into a two goal lead, only to let it slip and allow the home side back to 2-2.

With reports suggesting that the Juventus' second string had managed to get a win in the Ukraine, Craig Bellamy pounced on a deflected Kieron Dyer shot in injury time to fire Newcastle to a 3-2 win, and make Champions League history.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't stop smiling for days.

That game represents the biggest high I've ever had from Newcastle, eclipsing the 3-2 against Barca and the 5-0 against manure. The high coming from the fact that at one point we were hanging over the precipice of disaster, and looking like we wouldn't get the result we needed even while the result which was out of our hands was going our way.

What we need to show on Sunday, is that kind of application and spirit. We can't worry about results elsewhere. If Hull and sunderland both win, then good luck to them. But if they both lose, and we haven't tried, then that would be the most crushing result of all.

Let's hope Sunday is a high to eclipse Feyenoord.

Ha'way the Lads.

(If you want to relive the Feyenoord match in a bit more detail, nufc.com's match report can be found here.)