The Perfect Half!
By Dave Eadevic
September 16 2011
This was going to be an article on the QPR game and a London trip but as I was poisoned by a cockney burger outside the ground and spent three days throwing up I mean I don’t want to melodramatic here and say I was close to death, but I was ill enough to watch morning television.
So I have figured that Ryan Taylor's woeful performance, Tiote’s intent throughout the entire game of kicking Barton, (is it just me or does anyone else think he has been waiting for an opportunity to do that) has been done to death.
And anyway I am tired of always complaining, so it’s time to let our minds drift to more cheerful matters. The perfect 45 minutes. One half of football that was the best you have ever witnessed. Obviously it’s a subjective event, and a lot will depend on age.
And early front runner for me perhaps because I had just left QPR was the 5-5 draw. Now remember we are talking one half of the game so that one we were 4-0 up at half time Chris Waddle had got a first half hatrick and all seemed well with the world.
Another one was the 6 we thumped passed Leicester in one half to celebrate promotion to the premiership first time around.
But for me it has to be the game against Barcelona.
Let me set the scene, we had limped through qualification, no-one gave us a hope in hell.
We were playing one of the best sides in the world. They had arguably the best player in the world at that time in Figo and we tore them apart.
I mean it wasn’t just the fact we scored two in the first half, we simply wouldn’t allow them to play. Keith Gillespie tearing up and down the wing like a man suddenly possessed by the footballing gods.
But the night belonged really to one man Faustino Asprilla. Often brilliant, sometimes invisible this was to be Tino’s finest night in a Newcastle shirt. Linking perfectly with Gillespie for two wonderful headers (the second of which was in the other half but never mind) and a coolly taken penalty to give him a hatrick and us one of the most unlikely wins I think I have witnessed.
That was 1997, it was our debut in the champion’s league and it was still the last time any side beat Barcelona in an opening game in Europe.
So for that any many other reasons that is my favourite half of football ever.
What’s yours?
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Second, I can't believe I forgot the man utd 5-0, it would still be Barca for me, but only just.
