View from the away end

Welcome to the Costa Del Toon, where every other bar owner is from Whitley Bay and curry houses and burger bars abound. It's just being like at home - but with the weather, allegedly.

And with fans based in nearby Magalluf faced with a choice of refuelling stations ranging from Bobby's Bar to Tino's Pub and the Viana Cafe plus of course various Bodegas, the usual pre-match rituals were indulged in - with a few differences.
                                     
Shorts were worn (and drunk),  sombreros acquired and hotel breakfast buffets ransacked before around 3,000 high-spirited Mags made it to the San Moix by bus, taxi and foot, seemingly determined to enjoy themselves.
          
And it was cold. Actually, make that bloody freezing. Not that the low temperatures deterred the more intrepid of our number from exposing their torso's under the glare of the floodlights and the gaze of photographer's lenses - after all, a damp night in Espana is nowt new for wor lot but at least this time it wasn't on the Ramblas.

Meanwhile, the host club had seen fit to lay on some entertainment for the fans, which mostly consisted of an old geezer juggling a football with the aid of a bit of stick (as in wood, although he got some grudging applause as well as abuse from the Newcastle end.)

More universally ridiculed though were a selection of increasingly rotund Senors who wobbled past on the running track. Unfortunately our lot weren't quite au fait enough with local cuisine to give them a chorus of "who ate all the paella" but the fattest one of them all did look sorely tempted when someone hoyed a hot dog at his feet. If only he could have bent over that far...

Completing the scene was the Mallorca club mascot, a camp dragon with a bendy fork who affected an increasingly mincing gait as the game progressed and may in fact have been Marcelino - a Spaniard at a football ground for no apparent reason. Oh aye: and a speedboat. And a mock-up cannibal's cooking pot.   
                                                           
This raises a number of vital questions: Is a cannibal's cooking pot politically correct? Will Delia Smith be introducing one at Norwich? Was the speedboat at pitchside a reflection of a poor weather forecast or was it really an unclaimed prize from "Bullseye"? ("Three in a bed? Not in this game!")
                                    

A rather less-than-packed stadium - and a speedboat

We'll also now never know whether a toon goal at our end would have been celebrated by one or more of the players climbing on one of the props - Bellamy pretending to drive the speedboat had his boat come in would have been a fair bet, or perhaps stealing puff the magic dragon's fork and setting off for the United bench to put his point across....

By now some of you may be shuffling uneasily and wondering where the football content is - and that was about the mood of the travelling supporters at half time in the ground plus no doubt those who forked out for the PPV broadcast.
          
Admittedly by then we were well on the way to a quarter final spot after denying the home side a goal, but that fact was as due to their profligacy round our area as our "cast-iron" defence.
          
We looked most vulnerable down the flanks where Bernard and O'Brien had erratic evenings. And when your chief supply line is an agricultural hump upfield from Bramble - more haymaker than playmaker - and Stroller Ameobi is living up to his nickname, then pickings are slim indeed.

Indeed, the most notable onfield incidents of the first half were provided by the appearance of an electric cart on the field to retrieve ailing players, the arrival of which brought a chorus of "nee nah" siren impressions from the away sections.

Other than that, the biggest cheers thus far had come during the break, when Bellamy and Taylor incurred the wrath of Mallorca officials by blazing footballs into the toon end from the pitch - an amusing diversion ended by the refusal of ballboys to toss them further balls and which then saw the players lectured at pitchside by an angry club representative.

Thankfully the entertainment value was provided on the field within minutes of the restart by Alan Shearer, with assistance from his hapless stooge, the Mallorca goalkeeper.

However, a fair few travelling fans almost missed the opening goal due to the presence of a well-oiled gent in a floppy green sombrero who had climbed on the the parapet above the away section to retrieve a misplaced rubber chicken (you had to be there.)

With the tie dead and the locals heading for the exits, the slight air of unreality to the evening's proceedings continued with the appearance of Bellamy from the subs bench and his scoring our second goal within seconds before embarking on a solo celebration which incorporated some fittingly latino hand gestures directed at the toon bench, press box or both.

With the ground now almost totally bereft of non-Toon sympathisers, there was just time for a few more songs, a debut for 18 year-old Steven Taylor and another Shearer goal - which may just have been the easiest he's ever scored for the club.
                          
Then with confirmation coming in of Eindhoven's victory, the tell me ma chant then became of the "....home for tea, going to PSV" variety.

A return to the Netherlands then for both the toon and uncle Bobby, as he gets the chance to be received again at a former club and we complete the set of revisiting our 1997 Champs League opponents after repeat trips to Barecelona and Kiev.

Progress into a semi-final is now eminently possible, but will require a radically better input in the Philips Stadium from Newcastle than when last we were there. 

It also goes without saying that the form we're showing in large sections of these ties has to improve, otherwise our comparatively incident-free passage thus far will be under severe threat of curtailment, just when it starts to get interesting.             
                         
Given our problems in Breda earlier this season and an apparent ongoing feud with Feyenoord fans, it remains to be seen how disruptive the policing will be for our return to Holland - seven years ago only the official club trip was allowed tickets and such was the paranoia that the fans on them were billeted across the border in Belgium.

All in all, it promises to be a tad warmer than Mallorca, on and off the field...