Lucky Town

Not everyone can be as lucky as Newcastle United Football Club supporters. This may be a line some in the Toon Army feel they want to go back and read again but I mean it. Newcastle fans may have an owner they dislike who is trying to sell the club and a world class manager with his hands tied by the financial restraints upon him but at least they do not have a Tyne Athletic or Black Gate FC in their faces and doing much better than them. The shadow of a more successful local rival can be long indeed and, being local, there is virtually no escape from it.

Many clubs exist in such unequal binary relationships with the lesser light able to maintain league parity and, at least, hold its own on derby day. Others have seen their once inferior rivals pass them and must gulp down the shame and outrage every weekend. Some are now so far below their adversaries they would be happy to be forgotten by the outside world as belonging to the same conurbation.

I pity the 1860 Munich fan, supporter of a team now playing in the fourth tier of the German professional game, who must politely correct and then confirm that they share a city with Bayern. Things could be worse Geordies.

Leonard Apple.