Quote of the day

"Newcastle United is a magic name, a name forever in lights."

The Winnipeg Free Press back in 1949, during the club's tour of the US and Canada. How times have changed, eh?

Here's When Saturday Comes' Paul Brown (via the Guardian) to recount the eventful jaunt, during which we won all ten of our friendly fixtures. A certain Mr Milburn scored in them all, racking up 31 goals in 31 days.

The name game

Work has apparently started on the rebranding of Shearer's bar at St James' Park, with the hostelry to be renamed 9.

Given the frosty relationship which the Lion of Gosforth enjoys with Jabba, it is hardly a shock that we've looked to rebrand, albeit the fact that it began on the day that Shearer was using his Sun column to criticise the return of JFK makes it look like a spiteful knee-jerk reaction.

I can't believe the two are linked, given the time it inevitably takes to commission designs for a pub rebrand, and to be fair the decision can be viewed in one of two ways depending on your point of view. It is either a fitting tribute to the many fine strikers to have worn the number 9 shirt over the year (Milburn, Super Mac, Andy Cole, Sir Les, Shearer et al.) or it's a cheap shot at Wor Al.

It'll be interesting to hear whether the current incumbent of the shirt has any views on effectively being a walking advert for a bar, given his understandable reluctance to be sponsored by Wonga.

East End boys

Ever wondered about the journey we took to end up St James' Park? Local author and Toon fan Paul Brown has set out to map the locations of the grounds of the various precursors to the club we now know as Newcastle Utd.

(Thanks to .com for the link.)