How the world was painted a deep rich shade of Dan Burn

Sometimes football just can't help itself. Even now, in its glazed and managed state, plaything of propaganda machines and sharp-fanged hedge funds, it will still give you these moments, will follow its own gorgeously hammy storylines.

- Barney Ronay

Sometimes football just can't help itself. Even now, in its glazed and managed state, plaything of propaganda machines and sharp-fanged hedge funds, it will still give you these moments, will follow its own gorgeously hammy storylines. Here it gave Newcastle a story that couldn't have been more perfectly styled and finished: a Dan Burn day for a Dan Burn team at a Dan Burn Wembley, and a moment before half-time that seemed to paint the entire world a deep rich shade of Dan Burn.

The first half had been a grudging thing. Newcastle seemed to be the only team with any interest in actually making any football happen. As half-time loomed Kieran Trippier took a corner from the right. Somehow the Liverpool defence failed to register the vast, ambling figure inside the penalty area, with its distinctive, undulating way of moving, like a friendly CGI diplodocus in a Disney movie.

Burn hadn't scored since January last year but the only locally born starting player in either team broke that run with the perfect Newcastle goal. Not just the most important in the club's modern history, but also spectacular in the right way, with something classically cup final about it. This isn't just a Dan Burn header. This is a Dan Burn power header.

As the ball dipped Burn seemed to hang like a zeppelin, wrenching his neck muscles and producing a header into the corner of the net so agreeably meaty you could almost hear the thunk off his forehead.