WHEN BORO RATTLED THE TOON

JAMES M GOWLAND RECALLS NEWCASTLE’S DISCOMFORT WHEN THEY -LEAGUE STEVENAGE BOROUGH IN THE FA CUP...

- JAMES M GOWLAND

EVEN Jeremy Paxman got in on the act by asking on Newsnight: “Is Kenny Dalglish a big girl’s blouse?”

The Liverpool legend and then Newcastle United manager was seeing himself ridiculed by everybody and his side cast as the pantomime villain.

Barely a few years earlier, under the stewardship of Kevin Keegan, United had been everyone’s ‘second team’ but suddenly it seemed as if the whole world and his dog were desperate for them to lose.

The issue? Dalglish kicking up a fuss about having to play an FA Cup tie away against a group of part-timers from the GM Vauxhall Conference.

When the Premier League Magpies were drawn away at Stevenage Borough in the fourth round of the FA Cup in January 1998, it was one of those classic David versus Goliath ties - with the two sides separated by 99 league places.

Newcastle were a side that included £15m Alan Shearer, signed less than two years earlier for a then world record fee, whilst Stevenage had Giuliano Grazioli, a man who manager Paul Fairclough had joked cost the club ‘three packets of crisps and a Mars bar’. The contrast was stark.

But whilst many would have no doubt been looking for an upset on the pitch, they would find even more drama off it. The furore started when details of a phone call between Dalglish and Fairclough were leaked to the press.