Newcastle United 2, West Ham 2

Jan 12 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

NEWCASTLE United have done much to ostracise their supporters this season and they may well do more before the transfer window shuts.

But for once worrying financial problems and damaging schisms over the ownership issue should not be allowed to squeeze the joy out of following this troubled football club.

In many respects this was another home draw in which Newcastle dropped points because of defensive lapses and suffered because of their continuing inability to kill the game off when on top.

It was a game during which, once again, the fragility of the first-team squad was exposed with players asked to operate out of position and a bench of kids from the reserve team.

But it was also a game which will always be special for a local lad whose well-taken header gave Newcastle their equaliser and fulfilled a boyhood dream of scoring for his beloved Magpies. For Andy Carroll this was a game which meant so much more than just a point.

Supporting Newcastle United can turn the most optimistic into a melancholic pessimist, struggling to come to terms with the plight of a once-proud football club. Football is no longer the working man’s game, played for the benefit and pride of its local community. It is an international, multi-billion pound industry which loosely calls itself entertainment, or worse still, a leisure pursuit.

Carroll, though, proved that it retains some romanticism, that the feats of Roy of the Rovers and other comic book heroes of our youth were, at some level, always based in truth.

Carroll is not a newcomer to the United first team. He made his debut as a substitute in a 1-0 Uefa Cup win in Italy against Palermo in 2006 and has been on the fringes of the first-team set-up since.

But this was his first start at St James’s Park and he marked it with an important, rescuing goal in front of the Gallowgate end with his family watching from the stands.

How many of the 47,000-plus inside St James’s Park on Saturday used to dream of doing the same thing?

A black and white from Gateshead, Carroll used to watch his hero and former United captain Alan Shearer make a habit of scoring such goals over a career which made him a Newcastle legend. The 20-year-old still has some work to do before he can be compared to a former England international who is the club’s record goalscorer but he at least deserves to be described as a player who, at times against West Ham, reminded us of Gosforth’s finest.

Carroll was only playing alongside Michael Owen because of injuries to Shola Ameobi, Obafemi Martins, Alan Smith and Mark Viduka. But it is out of such adversity that opportunities are either seized or spurned.

He missed an easier header in the first half when he met Danny Guthrie’s excellent cross at the far post, but with Newcastle chasing the game he converted a far harder chance – rising above England international centre-back Matthew Upson to connect firmly with Damien Duff’s cross.

It was nothing more than he or Newcastle deserved. Despite a poor spell in the second-half when Carlton Cole capitalised on some poor defending from Steven Taylor – the England Under-21 international stood and watched the West Ham striker run behind the unsighted Fabricio Collocini – to smash the visitors into the lead 10 minutes after the restart, Newcastle always looked capable of scoring.

Owen, who also clipped the outside of the post after excellent work by Jonas Gutierrez on the left, gave the Magpies the lead when he put away a low shot from the edge of the area. That advantage was wiped out by former United striker Craig Bellamy, who combined with another former Magpie, Scott Parker, to lift the ball over Shay Given.

Given was also needed to make a good stop after Mark Noble had broken the United offside trap – he was actually at least a yard offside – but Newcastle kept on going forward as the game flew from one end to the next.

They thought they had restored parity when Lucas Neill sliced Coloccini’s cross into his own net, but Taylor had already been penalised for a shove on James Collins.

But after Carroll had headed them level they nearly won it in stoppage time.

Guttierez danced his way past a couple of defenders only for Upson to make a desperate last challenge as the United winger prepared to fire past Robert Green.