Lots of fun at the Riverside this afternoon. We were all over the place for the first 20 minutes but whupped them with Bellamy and Robert's pace. As you no doubt noticed, Robert won us a penalty, had the assists on two goals and scored one himself. The lad is an absolute gem and when he took his shirt off to hoy it in the crowd at the end he seemed to have an interesting effect on the lasses as well.

Particularly enjoyed Al's return to fitness with a belter from open play and the whole away end singing that bloody awful song Boro put on in place of atmosphere since they seemed to forget to put it on every time we scored.

Not a perfect performance by any stretch, but when did we last see NUFC get ruthless with an extra man rather than fall arse over tit? "Can we play you every week?"

-- Anonymous, September 08, 2001

Answers

Aye Soft One - canny day oot. Well worth hawking my body roond the

pubs in Monkseaton for a ticket :-(

For once, it looked like we had somebody on the park who could

actually hit the back of the net. When that ball came over to Big Al,

there was only one place it was going to end up. He's back, he's

back, Alan Shearer's back!. And you're right about Robert (tho I

cudda told him if he was ganna tek his shart off - well, it happens to

some of us aal the time ;-)

The game obviously turned on two penalty decisions. Tho we

benefitted, I still don't like to see the keeper sent off for a

clumsy (not dangerous) attempt to get the ball. Still we've

had those sorts of decidions go against us and it's nice to get the

rub of some cr@p reffing for a change. Yes, Poll was back to his

usual cr@pness.

IMHO, on today's performance, the sooner we get a decent CB, the

better. OK, so he scored, but Dabs was a bit of a liability, charging

up and doon the pitch and hardly winning a ball in the air against

Deane (who I thought was the best of a bad bunch of Smoggies).

But in all honesty, Boro were poor (tho not as bad as last season).

For once we made the most of our numeric (and technical) supremacy.

Roll on over ManUre.

-- Anonymous, September 08, 2001

Ee - what happened there lyuk??

-- Anonymous, September 08, 2001