Southampton 1 V Newcastle 2 March 2022

Wiltshire Mags present:

Dafs, Pegs, Browner and Veitchy (and his lad)

Report by Dafs

My last game watching Newcastle was with Pegs under the Ashley/Bruce regime in 2019, it was a pitiful 0-0 at home to Brighton, where I’d say we were lucky to get nil! At least I had the remainder of Peg’s stag do to finish that night to banish any memories of this truly awful spectacle

Anyway, onto the Southampton game, this was a Thursday night game, rearranged from a Covid cancelled fixture from the Christmas period. Southampton’s manager Hassenhuttl was very vocal about this saying we shouldn’t be allowed to play our January signings because they wouldn’t have played in the original fixture.... Say what now? It’s not like two of our January signings ended up scoring in a 2-1 victory is it Ralph?..Oh Wait!

An early finish at work for the short journey down south from Wiltshire, a good catch up with Browner as I picked him up on the way down (Mainly discussing how we were still in disbelief that Mike Ashley was no longer at the club). A quick pit stop at Salisbury as Pegs arrived after work to meet up with us halfway down in Salisbury and he duly followed in convoy into Southampton.

Having parked up, Yates’s and other away fan pubs were rammed, so we decided to have our first beer in the ground, where we met Veitchy and his lad soaking up the concourse atmosphere, we all duly joined in with first of many renditions of Bruno’s F’ing magic…

As for the game, a bit of a shaky start as Armstrong put the home side ahead after 35 mins, but the away end erupted 7 minutes later as Chris Wood grabbed an equaliser, a bullet header into the top corner from a pinpoint Shelvey cross. Southampton went close before the break when Adams rattled the crossbar

Optimism was strong for the second half, the noise in the concourse for the half time beer was amazing.

A quick celebrity spot a few rows behind us as Sky Sports Pete Graves (funky yellow gloves and all) was part of the very vocal toon army.

With the game in the balance, shortly after half time ‘that moment’ then happened… ‘that Bruno back heel’!, his first goal for us and he looked like he blooming well loved it!

What a moment, what a noise! That’s why we support the Toon, I’ve not heard an away crowd like that for a long while, that feeling of hope and belief which had diminished in recent years.

A massive three points in the context of where we were in the table as we pulled further towards safety.

The whole squad and coaching staff looked in awe of the away end following at the final whistle as they applauded the away fans whilst we belted out eieieio up the premier league…. About 84 times!

A nice short journey for the Wiltshire Mags (safely back home by midnight), but a 350 mile plus journey back for most of the toon army must have seen them crawl into their beds well into Friday morning. Unbelievably worthwhile I bet.