Malcolm Macdonald: ‘Without Tueart the monkey might not have been on Newcastle’s back for quite so long’

M alcolm Macdonald will never forget the extraordinary contrast of pain and perfection. To this day, the memory leaves him torn between angst and awe. On 28 February 1976, Dennis Tueart left Macdonald and his Newcastle teammates shattered after scoring the most exquisite winning goal imaginable in front of 100,000 fans at Wembley as Manchester City won the League Cup final 2-1.

“It was the most perfect overhead kick, the timing of his jump was absolute perfection,” recalls Macdonald. “He was right over the ball, slammed it downwards and the strike was lethal. It’s probably the best bicycle kick I’ve ever seen and Dennis had to choose to score it against us.”

Coincidentally Tueart was a boyhood Newcastle fan who grew up in Heaton, one of the city’s suburbs. “At the final whistle Dennis put a Newcastle shirt on and, when he tried to go up to collect his winner’s medal, a steward turned him away, saying: ‘It’s not your turn yet,’” says Macdonald. “He was trying to explain: ‘I’ve swapped shirts.’ But they wouldn’t let him through.”

Later Tueart dropped into the Newcastle dressing room. “We were all saying: ‘You lucky bastard,’” remembers Macdonald of his fellow England striker. “We’d been so confident that I still have a strong feeling that, without Dennis Tueart, we’d have won the cup and the monkey might not have been on this club’s back for quite so long.”

Macdonald, 73, was born in Fulham and spent much of his early life in London, at one point starring for Arsenal, but for the past three decades he has lived in the north-east where, thanks to invariably candid analysis and an excellent broadcast voice, he enjoyed a successful career in local radio.

With his resolutely home counties delivery unaltered by even the