This season, I want to take a walk down memory lane back through my 24 years and over 600 games of watching Palace.
For each home game, I’ll reflect on the highs and lows that I’ve seen against our opposition. Some clubs, I’ve got a rich history of great Palace moments, and for others, there’s been limited encounters but I’ll try to capture the emotion, context and excitement of the Palace life.
Newcastle United
My personal record, although it has some highs, is pretty depressing against Newcastle. In my early days of supporting Palace, we seemed to have a whole load of games against them – without much success. Twice in four seasons (1998/99 and 2001/02) we drew them away in the FA Cup third round – the second of which gave us the legendary Aleksandrs Kolinko save.
In happier times, we also had a hastily rearranged away game in March 1998 where goals from Attilio Lombardo and Matt Jansen ended a run of eight straight losses and nearly five months without a Premier League win – Spurs away in November the previous year.
Sadly, although I remember following these games on teletext and the radio, I didn’t attend any and my first four matches against Newcastle brought me four defeats without a single goal. Yet when the goals came, they didn’t stop! We won 5-1 as we flew through 2015 with 19 wins out of 38 Premier League games at a time when Alan Pardew was arguably the most popular man in South London. However, I’m going to go for a slightly abstract match for my favourite against Newcastle.
Highlight
Newcastle…2
Palace…0
27th January 2010, Championship
Newcastle United: Harper, Coloccini, Jose Enrique (Pancrate 25), Williamson, Kadar, Nolan, Guthrie, Gutierrez (Ranger 73), Lovenkrands (Routledge 62), Smith, Carroll
Crystal Palace: Speroni, Clyne, Hill, Hills (Djilali 75), Butterfield, Ertl (Lawrence 4), Derry, Ambrose, Danns, Carle (Lee 82), Andrew
What is Palace about for me? It’s about friends, it’s about community and it’s about the atmosphere. It’s a shared love that’s felt from all over the world by thousands from different backgrounds, races, religions and generations. When I first moved to Australia, the Palace community in Sydney welcomed me and helped me to feel at home. It’s about family – I love sharing the ride with my Dad and I love taking my little niece and nephew but it’s about another family too. The Palace family. What it’s never been about, is winning and losing.
The day before this game at Newcastle, Palace had been placed into administration and all of the things that I held dear about the club were under threat. Immediately, I had a fear. An emptiness. A confusion. An uncertainty. The only comparison I can make is to someone you care about going into hospital – without knowing if they’ll come back out.
Alone, I travelled three-hundred miles up to Newcastle for the midweek game. However, once I was up there, I was anything but alone. The official records show that a thousand Palace fans travelled but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of people decided to make the pilgrimage at the last moment. Around the city, I met fans who’d flown in from Ireland, Denmark and Devon. Together, and more than any other match I’ve been to, it really was together, we took on the match with genuine Palace Pride. Players, fans, and even Neil Warnock seemed closer than ever. That feeling, that shared love, made me we know we’d be alright… and we were… just about.
GOING DOWN?
ARE WE F***!
MINUS TEN!
AND WE’RE STAYING UP!
Here are Clint Hill’s memories of that fateful time in our history from my first book, the Palace Addiction, available in the club shop and on amazon:
“We arrived in Newcastle airport after our short trip up from London. While we where waiting for our luggage to arrive, all you could hear was phones ringing and beeping with text messages. Right away, I thought something ain’t right here. Had someone been sold without us knowing? Had the gaffa been sacked, even though he was here with us? No – it was much worse than that! We had been deducted ten points and placed into administration. We had gone in the space of ninety minutes from being a comfortable mid-table team to being in one hell of a relegation dog fight.
From then on, it was one problem to the next. PFA meeting after PFA meeting. They would come in one week and say “Lads, the club is struggling to pay wages this month. Would you mind deferring the money till next month?” or “I’m afraid we are gonna have to sell Victor Moses to Wigan so the club can survive!” One thing I can’t speak highly enough of was the character and strength of that dressing room. It was unbelievable! Not one person moaned or chucked the towel in about the situation we found ourselves in! Instead, it galvanised us as a group and we achieved the unthinkable.
We used to have dance offs before every game, adopting songs like The Proclaimers and Black Eyed Peas (Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night). You used to see teams walking past our dressing room and looking in and going “What the hell are they doing?” Those moments will live with me until I die. Looking back now, it was our way of switching off and taking the mounting pressure off our minds, for a little bit at least.”
Lowest Moment
Newcastle…1
Palace…0
21st October 2017, Premier League
Newcastle United: Elliot, Yedlin, Lascelles, Lejeune, Manquillo, Hayden (Merino 56′), Shelvey, Ritchie, Pérez (Diamé 66′), Atsu, Joselu (Mitrovic 78)
Crystal Palace: Speroni, Ward, Dann, Sakho, van Aanholt, McArthur (Sako 88′), Cabaye, Milivojevic, Schlupp, Townsend, Zaha (Loftus-Cheekat 77)
The start of last season was about as low as it’s been under CPFC2010. The feel-good factor of promotions, Wembley appearances and historic survivals had evaporated to a distant memory. We all know the facts – seven games, seven losses, no goals – and then along came Chelsea!
The relief of not only ending the run but beating the Premier League Champions to do so was a high that could parallel even the lowest lows of the preceding shocking run. Wilfried Zaha was back from injury and Julian Speroni was in goal. Nothing could stop us now! Well, until we limped to a late 1-0 loss at the newly promoted Newcastle the following week which left us cut adrift at the bottom, on a minus seventeen goal difference and eleven points behind Newcastle who’d started the season as relegation favourites.
The adrenalin and hope from the week before had been well and truly sapped out of me.
My Personal Record of Live Matches Against Newcastle
| Played | Won | Drawn | Lost | Scored | Conceded | Home | Away |
| 7 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 6 | 12 | 5 | 2 |
- Palace…0 Newcastle…2 (Premier League, 2005)
- Palace…0 Newcastle…2 (Championship, 2009)
- Newcastle…2 Palace…0 (Championship, 2010)
- Palace…0 Newcastle…3 (Premier League, 2013)
- Palace…5 Newcastle…1 (Premier League, 2015) – Bolasie (2), Zaha, McArthur (2)
- Newcastle…1 Palace…0 (Premier League, 2017)
- Palace…1 Newcastle…1 (Premier League, 2018) – Luka Milivojevic
