A strong Newcastle first team XI did what Leeds had failed to do on Friday, posting a 4-0 win on our first visit to Hull City's Kingston Communications Stadium on Monday night in near-heatwave conditions.

After some early exchanges which put both sets of fans in a 15,000+ crowd in good voice, Newcastle profited from poor defensive work to take the lead, Michael Chopra nipping in to fire confidently past Northern Irish 'keeper Alan Fettis on 21 minutes. 

And with ten minutes to go before the interval Shola Ameobi kept up his goalscoring record on this ground with a well-struck effort from outside the area that simply flew in.

The striker had been on target in June for England U21s on this ground, opening the scoring against Serbia & Montenegro, but he soon found himself the centre of attention for other reasons, twice clashing with Tigers defender Marc Joseph. Both players were ultimately yellow-carded.

It wasn't all one-way traffic though, with Steve Caldwell making a timely clearance when the game was scoreless, Steve Harper deserving his clean sheet after an excellent reflex stop to deny Allsopp and an offside "goal" by the same player rightly ruled out.

With coach John Carver making only one change at the break, combining the Caldwell brothers in central defence, Newcastle quickly went in search of more goals.

Michael Chopra increased our advantage just before the hour after an elongated passing sequence from Newcastle that had the home side chasing shadows.

Some LuaLua trickery down the left took him to the byline and an accurate centre was turned in by Chopra from close range in front of the travelling toon contingent.

Further scoring looked inevitable as Hull ran out of steam, with Chopra looking for his hat trick. However, some profligacy in front of goal and over-elaboration by LuaLua saw us fail to add to the total, Ameobi's strike against the post the nearest we came to a fourth until the dying seconds.

With almost countless replacements made by both sides, to great applause from the away fans Carl Cort planted a firm header home in the final minute from a right wing Hughes cross. His celebration looked to be a mixture of joy and relief, after spurning an earlier chance and seeing another goal-bound effort deflected just over the crossbar by a city player.

For Hull, ex-toon player Richie Appleby had a reasonably uneventful hour on the pitch in midfield, but Stuart Green was unable to face his former employers after tweaking a groin in training.  

Toon chant of the night: "we all love fish"