A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

The Openreach guy turned up as promised.  He was very friendly - and he was a Newcastle United fan.  He gave up his season ticket during " the Ashley years " and now has little chance of getting a ticket to see a match. So he was very jealous that I was going to see the game this evening. He did some checks in the house and agreed that the fault with the landline was outside.  He had a gadget which showed him approx where the fault was -- round the corner in the main road.  He left lots of equipment at my house plugged into the socket and went off to find the fault.  He came back after about 30 mins and said he had fixed it.  There are two wires which serve my house and one of them - the landline one - was broken so he fixed it.  The other wire - the broadband one was bent - so he fixed that.  He said that my broadband speed should be better now as the bent wire would have been slowing it up.  So ... job done.

I did a few chores and then went back to bed for a couple of hours.  Watched some TV in the afternoon and then got ready to go to the match.

My sister in law V  arrived at 6pm to give me a lift.  Kick off was 8pm but we knew traffic would be bad .  It took us over an hour to get into town.  She managed to drop me off quite near to the ground.

Newcastle were playing PSG ( Paris Saint- Germain) in a Champions League match.  The first home game in the Champions League in 20 years.  Even outside the ground the atmosphere was amazing.  Singing and chanting and general high spirits.  I managed to spot the PSG team bus as I made my way to the ground.  Photo is in Extra collage.  Also in Extras is a shot of the crowds near The Strawberry pub.

Huge queues at every turnstile but the digital ticketing seemed to be working well so the crowds moved fairly quickly.  The French team were warming up just in front of where I was sitting so I took some shots.  See Extra collage. You can see the Captain Mbappe - regarded as one of the best players in the world.  There were lots of press photographers taking photos too.

Wor Flags excelled themselves this evening.  Flags and banners in all 4 stands.  I had a black flag to wave. 

On to the game .... and what a game it was.  Newcastle played brilliantly.  In the first half especially they were wonderful.  Miggy scored for The Toon after only 17mins. I have added an Extra I took after Miggy scored.  He ran to the corner flag to celebrate and lots of Newcastle fans ran over to celebrate with him.   On the 39th minute local lad "Big " Dan Burn got the ball in the net.  

In the second half PSG played better but the next goal came from Newcastle player Sean Longstaff - another local lad.  PSG scored after 56 mins making the score Newcastle 3 PSG 1.  I thought that was it as the score stayed the same until full time ........ but in Extra time my favourite player Fabian Schar got a goal.  ( He doesn't often score as he's a defender )  So Newcastle won 4 - 1.  It puts them at the top of their group . As you can imagine " the crowd went wild ".  It was hard to tear myself away from the celebrations but I had a long walk ahead to get my lift so I headed off.

Thousands of other Newcastle fans were going the same way as me so the atmosphere carried on all the way to where V was waiting.   It took much less time to get home as the roads were clear. 

No time for any comments this evening - I will try and catch up in the coming days. 

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