Sent off: None

SAFC: Sorensen, Makin, Butler, Bould, Gray, Rae, Schwarz (Ball 69 mins), McCann, Summerbee, Quinn, Phillips
Subs Not Used: Oster, Dichio, Helmer, Marriott
Booked: Phillips, Butler, McCann
Sent off: None

Referee:  Graham Poll, Tring

Goals:
28 mins. With United attacking with the rain towards the Cape of Good Hope, sorry Leazes End, Robinson slipped an astute ball through to Dyer, who lofted it over Sorensen and into the back of the net. 1-0.
64 mins. Disputed free kick was played into the box by Summerbee, and the ball went straight to the unguarded head of Niall Quinn. 1-1.
72 mins. Shearer now on the pitch, but again the action was at the wrong end, as Phillips was fed by Summerbee and had the time to see his first attempt cannon back off Wright, before whipping in the rebound in the style of Colin West at the same end many years before. 1-2.

Waffle: I'm writing this over a week after the game, and just thinking about it brings the ache returning to the very pit of my stomach. The last time I recall feeling as low as this, wasn't after Cup final humiliations or league chuckings-away, although they were torture of the white-poker variety. No, you have to return the start of the decade we're just leaving and the second leg of the playoff final against the Wearside forces of darkness. At the end of both games I left the ground shirtless, originally in shame at the antics of the idiots who invaded the pitch and second time round due to my drenched state and Christ-like belief that my suffering was for a purpose. Still, one improvement in a decade - at least I went to work this time, unlike the playoffs, when I took to my bed in the huff.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, there was some reason for the suffering last Wednesday; a spiritual cleansing of the club, courtesy of what can only be described as an Old Testament storm (what's in store for the next home game - a plague of locusts ?). One week later, the club has emerged, symbolically all together in a black and white lifeboat, Shearer at the helm, the Dutch boy tossed overboard for the sharks and Bobby Robson playing the part of Captain Birdseye. Whether we go down with all hands is still to be decided, but at least we might stop fighting in public over the lifejackets, much to the delight of the media.

How Gullit thought he would get away with dropping Shearer and playing bloody Maric against the mackems is beyond me - if reports are to be believed, Shepherd even intervened to put Shearer on the bench rather than in the stand, which looks to me like Rudi making a public statement of intent to bugger off. The Milburn dwellers who sported white rain jackets looked from afar like a Ku Klux Klan enclave, waiting for the final whistle to sound before pouncing on Rudi and dragging him off for a lynching. That wooden cross will have been a bugger to light on a night like this though....

Sad that the mackems came in their usual unskilful way, sad that they were miles ahead of us in grit, fight and determination, but true. Inevitable that Rudi would go once people started to turn against him, but debatable where Shearer will fit into the Brave New World of Bobby Robson. I'd like it to be leading by example from the front, but whether Bobby agrees remains to be seen. Imagine for a moment what the scenario would have been had a Shearerless United beaten the Monkeys heed XI and Rudi stayed on. In times to come, Shearer may issue a quiet prayer that Niall Quinn and Kevin Philips did as much to secure his future on Tyneside post-Gullit as the England Captain was able to do himself....