G'day Newcastle fans. My name is Liam McAlary and I am a new writer for newcastlefanstv.com. I am 18 years old and from Melbourne (Australia), so I thought a good way to start off would be to give you a little snapshot into life as a Newcastle fan in Australia.
To demonstrate this, I'll run you through the way I experienced the game against Preston, where we secured promotion. The alarm went off at 4:30am, I dragged myself out of bed and went to turn on the TV. Thankfully the game was televised, so I went to the channel, quickly made some food and sat down to watch the game (well tried to, I spent most of the game pacing around the room). When Perez scored early, I had to remain quiet as my parents and brothers would not want to be woken at 5am on a public holiday. When the game finished, I crossed the last couple of points off my points to promotion chart and spent the rest of the day in a euphoric state, and a Newcastle shirt.
Despite being far from the most popular sport in Australia, there are a lot of football fans, although very few support teams like Newcastle. Most of them support teams such as Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea, so it can be difficult to find people to talk about Newcastle with, so you are, quite isolated as a Newcastle fan down under.
News on the club can be hard to find, as Newcastle receives a lot less coverage than other clubs, and football receives significantly less coverage than other sports, such as Rugby and Australian Football. During the Championship season, news was significantly harder to come across due to the lack of sources that are accessible in Australia.
Furthermore, if you want to purchase a poster to put on your bedroom wall to try and liven up the room, many places do not ship to Australia, or it can cost an absurd amount to post them (sometimes over £35 for a poster).
Newcastle can be challenging to support at the best of times, especially when you live halfway around the world, with games being played at ridiculous hours, completely destroying a person's sleeping patterns. However, with the season we were given last season (albeit in the Championship), and with Rafa in charge, I would say it's worth it.