Dark days return to St James's Park It may not be a tune to match the Blaydon Races, but the chant of "sack the board" is similarly steeped in Geordie culture. And its first airing at St James's Park yesterday for more than a decade and a half marked the return of the dark old days at Newcastle United. A whole generation of junior Magpie fans have grown up without raising their voices against the club's powers-that- be. But Newcastle's slump to within one place of the bottom of the Premiership prompted supporters young and old to vent their spleen, in time-honoured Geordie fashion, on chairman Freddy Shepherd. In the 1970s, it was Lord "The Pirate" Westwood who bore the brunt of fans' fury at Newcastle's slide into the old Second Division. In the late 1980s, barrister Gordon McKeag presided over another relegation which prompted a mood of all-out revolt on the terraces. Now, after 15-plus years of near-triumphant peaks and depressing troughs on the pitch- but little transition off it - rebellion is back in the air. And Shepherd, having entered the United boardoom courtesy of the coup which toppled McKeag, knows full well the power of the people on Tyneside. Although talk of a takeover has roused the fans to demand change, the man whose family made their name in scrap metal has seemed set on staying put at St James's. And, given that he was in Majorca rather than the director's box yesterday, it remains to be seen whether the ferocity of the fans' uprising against him will prompt a change of heart. But the Geordie electorate have spoken. And with history telling us their next move will be to vote with their feet, even darker days may lie ahead for Shepherd . . . and for Newcastle United. | 
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