KEEGAN SIGNS

SIMON BAXTER RECALLS WHEN NEWCASTLE UNITED PULLED OFF A SENSATIONAL TRANSFER COUP AND GAVE HIM THE LAST LAUGH

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THE heat from the coal fire not yet emanating through the house, I rubbed a hole in the cold condensation of my bedroom window, just big enough to form a peephole, enabling me to see the garden below and next door's gate, through which the paperboy would soon emerge.

I had heard the gate open and had sprung up before he could disappear along the street. Long before social media, this was my way of catching the latest sports news before going to school.

Neil, the paperboy, was a Sunderland supporter who took great delight, most mornings, in bringing bad tidings to my gate as he passed by on his daily round.

Newcastle United had been in the doldrums ever since I started supporting them, when Gordon Lee left, and we were relegated in the 77/78 season.

Good news days were hard to come by, and Neil loved to show me the headlines from The Journal newspaper, especially when Newcastle lost and Sunderland won.

I peered through my peephole. Neil held up the headline

Cox Returns in Triumph

I opened the window slightly.

“You must be desperate,” Neil laughed.

I wasn’t sure who Cox was. “What does it say?”

Neil glanced down at the newsprint and picked out a sentence.

“Joe Harvey says the fans will love him,” he sneered. “Eventually”.

At school we tried to get a bigger picture of who Arthur Cox was.

“My dad says he’s a hard man, a real sergeant-major, it’s what we need.”

Others weren’t so optimistic, bringing the news that in an Express article, Brian Clough had called Cox a “yes man” with no experience.