Dimitri: My Love for NUFC

In our series of articles chronicling how the team at Toon Under Podcast came to support Newcastle United Football Club, Dimitri recalls how he first discovered NUFC and the lengths he went to in order to watch the games.

Many of you might ask how an Australian born Greek 29 year-old man could fall in love with one of the biggest underachievers in world football on the other side of the planet. No, the answer is not because of Greek warrior Nikos Dabizas…

My love for the toon started in 1998 when I was 6 years old, when my dad gave me a World Cup booklet included in the paper one weekend during the 1998 France World Cup. In that liftout was the one and only Alan Shearer, with an entire page write up about the England skipper and his achievements and stats. Six year old me read this thinking wow, for this player to be in the paper and have a huge poster, he must be great, let’s see who he plays for and follow his club…

The living legend, Alan Shearer

As simple as that, my support for NUFC started – although perhaps if I had of read the paper 2 years earlier during Euro 1996, I would have been a Blackburn Rovers fan!

From then on, I committed 100 percent to supporting the club – which back then wasn’t easy as there wasn’t readily accessible Pay TV to watch the games. There would be a weekly highlights show on SBS on Monday nights, which would give me the only glimpse of the team. Some of my earliest memories keeping up with the club are getting my brother to check the scores the day after the match and write the results on a sticky note for me outside my door so I would see them when I woke up. Whenever we would travel as a family our first port of call would be to rush to the nearest internet café to soak up as much football news as we could.

One of my fondest memories as a young toon fan was when Craig Bellamy scored the last-minute goal to put us through vs Feyenoord in the Champions League. I remember my teacher – who was a Spurs fan – letting me come to his desk during home room to watch the live ticker on uefa.com, and then pointing to the play-by-play commentary showing me that we had scored! I immediately jumped up and celebrated, while the rest of my grade 4 class was wondering what on earth Dimi was so excited about at 8.30am on a Thursday morning before school!

There has also been much pain following the club, none more so back in 2008/09 when we were relegated. The final day disaster vs Villa happened to be the day before my first accounting exam, and I remember going into class the next day visibly shaken and in tears. My teacher was staggered and completely confused, wondering why on earth one of his students would be crying over an accounting exam! I told him what had happened and explained I was just not in the right frame of mind to sit the exam, and thankfully he gave me an extra 20 minutes to gather myself!

As I got older and the games were starting to be shown on pay TV, I would religiously sleep over every weekend at my grandma’s house to make sure I could watch the games live. Ever since the late 2000’s I can’t remember a game I haven’t watched live on TV, and when I look back at our level of football and results even I have to admit this is quite an effort! I haven’t forgotten the pain of sitting through the game vs Tottenham on a Monday morning at 3.00am before work, where we were down 4-nil within 20 mins.

Thankfully that is all now in the past, and with the new ownership and Eddie Howe in charge it’s the first time I can remember since the great Sir Bobby Robson days that we can be finally look to achieve something. 

Until that day comes I’m more than willing to enjoy the rollercoaster of being a Newcastle fan; and despite being from the other side of the world with no connection to the club, my love and passion will never fade for the mighty toon!

Dimitri

Dimi’s love for Newcastle started back in 1998 when he was introduced to the great Alan Shearer; in the proceeding 15 years he’s hardly missed a game, regardless how early in the morning kickoff may have been.

E: [email protected] Tw:@Mitcho1992

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