“When I was a young boy I wanted to play for Newcastle United, I wanted to wear the No.9 shirt and I wanted to score goals at St James’ Park.”
So said Alan Shearer post-retirement, when looking back at an exceptional career that scaled heights few others have managed to reach.
Unquestionably he hung up his boots as a Premier League legend. Arguably, he was, and remains, England’s greatest ever centre-forward.
His dream was nurtured first in the Gallowgate End, watching his beloved Magpies with his father, who would regale him of tales of Jackie Milburn, a hero to his dad and a hero to the North-East.
Milburn was a giant of an earlier era, banging in goals for fun for Newcastle across most of the Nineteen-Fifties. He won three FA Cups with the club and would have gained more England caps were it not for the likes of Stan Mortensen and Tom Finney.
A cousin to the mother of Bobby and Jack Charlton, ‘Wor Jackie’ was introverted off the pitch but a demon on it, rocketing goals in from distance and giving goalkeepers of his day sleepless nights before facing him.
Across 399 appearances in black and white, he found the back of the net 201 times, a club record.
If the mark of a man is measured by how he is remembered, consider this. A stand at St James Park is named in his honour, so too is an academy school of excellence and, somewhat randomly, a steam locomotive.
There have been three statues cast and erected in tribute, one of which resides outside the ground, another in the high street of his childhood town of Ashington.
Only two have ever been commissioned of Sir Isaac Newton.
As a young boy Shearer Sr idolised this footballing colossus and now standing beside him, watching inferior fare prior to Kevin Keegan returning and transforming the club, was a son who had potential enough to become a professional.
Soon he would be off to Southampton, coming up through the youth ranks with Matt Le Tissier, and there on the South Coast, hundreds of miles from home, he hit the ground running.
On his league debut, at just 17 years of age, Shearer fired in a hat-trick against Arsenal, gaining him every back-page headline. Three seasons later he was voted the Saints’ Player of the Year and it wasn’t long before he received international recognition.
In the summer of 1992, aged 21, the striker became the most expensive player in British football, joining Blackburn for £3.6m.
He would break the transfer record again but first there was a league title to be won, Rovers fending off Manchester United despite the Reds being hot favourites in the football betting.
Shearer scored 34 goals that season and beyond Ewood Park was now fully established as England’s number nine, the nation’s hopes resting on his goal-scoring prowess every two years.
The following year another 31 goals rained in, from just 35 league games, and the granite-tough, fearsomely prolific forward was well on his way to ultimately becoming the Premier League’s all-time record goal-scorer.
Let’s not forget either the considerable bounty converted before the competition came into being.
Had live betting existed back in his prime just imagine the slender odds on him scoring, in any game, at any moment, against any opposition. Because that’s what he did, and he did it better than anybody else.
And then it came. The announcement. That famous photograph of Shearer standing before thousands of jubilant Geordies on signing for his boyhood club for a fee that felt whopping at the time but now sounds ordinary. Regardless, £15m was a world record. A fortune.
And of course, he was worth every penny, this sheet-metal worker’s son from Gosforth. Newcastle may not have won anything during his decade at the club but what the St James Park faithful had was a totem, an idol. Furthermore, he was a goal-scoring phenomenon.
There was that thunderous strike against Everton. A third Golden Boot to add to his collection. There were four occasions when the fabled 20-goal barrier was smashed as he racked up goal after goal, each time wheeling away with a single arm aloft.
As his legs began to weary and his career drew to a close two centuries of goals were reached, then another to match his father’s hero’s tally.
The anticipation to surpass Milburn’s all-time record rose to fever pitch and even for a player as stone-cold as Shearer the pressure got to him. He needed seven attempts to do it, six games of missed chances and fluffed lines. This mattered, a lot.
But on this day in 2006, it finally arrived. The goal. The weight off his back. The legacy forever secured.
At home to Portsmouth on a cold February afternoon, the ball was punted forward and a clever back-hell by Shola Ameoba put the striker through.
With only the keeper the beat, Shearer got a good toe on it, dispatching it home and if you’re in any doubt as to what it meant to him, consider this.
He wheeled away with both arms aloft.
“When I was a young boy I wanted to play for Newcastle United, I wanted to wear the No.9 shirt and I wanted to score goals at St James’ Park.”
It was a dream fulfilled 200 times over and more.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
