Thetownend.com

Newcastle United "systematically abused" the tax system to "secretly" make payments to agents and players during transfers, a court has heard.

Sounds familiar

I bet they get relegated two divisions !!!

You missed the word allegedly....

Fair comment............until proven !

A court has allegedly heard?

tbf, their fans were almost as upset as we were when we failed to take our place in the top flight

Newcastle=big club, slap on wrist.
Swindon=little club, drastic measures, relegation.

Happened many times since we were demoted to the big clubs and always a small slap on the writst and don't do it again. Chelsea, West Ham, Spurs etc

Probably had something to do with Sunderland getting it.

Yes not entirely sure where Newcastle came into this.

After we were relegated they claimed they should be promoted in our place because they finished 3rd in the league

This is only to do with their appeal against HMRC coming and taking their computers etc to look for evidence, nothing has been looked at or proven by HMRC as yet just suspicion they are dodgy dealing

Having moved to Newcastle in 1993, being a Swindon fan was still looked upon as a bit of a black mark after the events of 1990.  

In short Newcastle finished 3rd, the Mackems 6th, yet as we beat them in the play off final they were promoted over Newcastle despite Newcastle finishing 3 places higher in the league. Just helped to fuel the hatred between the two clubs up there really!

I don't remember them trying that at all, I do however remember Sheff Weds saying because they finished 3rd bottom that they should not be relegated.

Not sure the club ever did formally, the fans went batcrap crazy about it though

Standard for Geordies ;)

Newcastle fans would have been desperate as hell to get something out of our downfall. They had just lost in the Play-Offs to their bitter rivals and then enjoyed watching them get outplayed at Wembley.

I dare say that there were some passionate football conversations in workplaces across Tyne & Wear at that time.

Newcastle had indeed lost to Sunderland that year in the PO semis.  The second leg was at St James' Park.  In injury time, when it was clear there would be no overturning the first leg deficit, there was a pitch invasion.  I think this abandoned the match.  That was certainly the intent.  I remember meeting an otherwise normal Geordie who received my suggestion that this wasn't a sensible way to proceed with genuine and complete incomprehension.

More recently I met another Geordie who told me that he had tried living down south, Stevenage as it happens, but could never settle there because of the heat.  I suppose you don't see too many Geordies in films about the days of the Raj and so on, but still. Stevenage!

Perhaps they have a finely-tuned sense of irony that I keep missing.  My take however is that they are seriously f*cking mental.

They punch fucking horses!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApbRL9-slqI

and that! :)

In the season after demotion we 'inherited' Sunderland's fixtures including Newcastle away on Boxing Day. Later to become known as the Ant and Dec match when the two young actors on Byker Grove agreed to go to the Swindon game together.

I know everyone was wondering:
26 DEC 1990    LGE    Newcastle United (Away)    1 - 1    Gittens    17,003    

Wonder if Ant and Dec would have happened had we won?!

Or if Newcastle were rightfully playing Sunderland, could they have got tickets for presumably a sell out. I went to that Boxing Day game and St James's was a bit of a dive then

Sent from my HTC One M9

Indeed it was, the year I moved up was the first year they were in the Premiership and they had got the ground up together a fair bit by then. in 1993-94 I lived immediately next to the ground (so close that you had to look up out of the bedroom window to see the sky as the stand was so close) and I know that the year before when we and they go promoted the lad who had had my room before had been charging fans £10 to watch the game from the bedroom window as you could see the whole pitch before they closed the corner of the stands in the close season - I was well pissed off!

Seems a poor crowd for such a well supported club.

I always delight in telling nouveau Chelsea fans, that when we played them in the Prem, the crowd was bigger at the CG than Stamford Bridge  :)

Newcastle regulary had crowds under 15k back in the 80s and 90s. Their season average in 1991 was only 16k.

That was the only Premier league game I went to that season. Bit of vitriol for GH that day. Crowd must have been about 14k?

I was in the Arkells and I think we lost 3-1. Pretty sure there were 2 late goals and Dennis Wise scored? (I haven't googled this game yet). I'm pretty sure that's correct as my granddad left early to beat the crowd and get the trusty B reg fiesta to pick up my dad and I.

"fuck off Judas"...

Mark Stein got one I remember, had to look up the other scorer (Shipperly). Actually just watched the video, beautiful ball from Moncur for ours :)

http://swindon-town-fc.co.uk/MatchCentre.asp?Tab=Video&MatchID=19940124

Only manage that game and Man U that season :(

That was the only game home and away I missed that season, I had flu.

I lived and went to school in Scotland, what was your excuse? ;)

Newcastle away was the only one I missed.
Don't think tickets were available for away fans due to reduced capacity?
Over and above the call of duty for any town fans who made it to that one.
The highlights show a very small pocket of celebration in the Gallowgate as our goal went in.Think it was Fenwick who scored.

university, though only in Swansea

7-1 defeat. I watched that on teletext at my Grandad and Grandmother's house in Stratton St Margaret. My Grandad was a Pompey fan so I got a fair amount of stick that day!

In good old fixture computer style, I lived in Newcastle but had to be home in Witney the weekend of the game.....

I went too. If memory serves me right, I think it was that visit to St James' where we got a bit of a coining. And it wasn't chocolate coins from the Christmas selection pack.

'Uni'...Batch...it's 'Uni'...no one says un-iv-ers-it-y any more...I mean - the absolute drudgery of it...think how much of your life you've wasted in saying or typing those 5 (count them - five) syllables... ::)

people like that would have been confined to "poly" in my day

I discovered t'other day, that the origins of the term Polytechnic, came from Cornwall. A quaker family in Falmouth set up the first Polytechnic, it's aim to enable their workers to develop scientific and technological ideas in 1832. It's now the last Poly, literally as it has shortened the name to The Poly, as is the modern way.

You learn something new...

Wonderful isn't it  :)