Harps backs faith of fans

Despite the turmoil surrounding the club, summer holidays, recession, Swine Flu and everything else screwed up in the world of football and beyond roughly 6,500 Newcastle fans have already followed their team away to two games against lower league opposition. This hasn't gone unnoticed amongst the players and Steve Harper spoke for them, saying:

'I never doubted the Geordies for a second. They will follow us to the ends of the earth. The Geordies are different class, you saw that at Huddersfield and at Darlington on Saturday and they'll be there in their thousands at Leyton Orient on Saturday.

I think they'll love going to away grounds they haven't been to for a while this year but hopefully it's just for one season. They are fantastic and we don't take them for granted at all.

It's important we keep winning in friendlies until 8 August - we've got a very tough first game and we're just building towards that. The spirit in the camp is good, everybody is looking after each other and digging in. The boys are working hard.

It's going to be tough in the Championship, there are a lot of big teams in there and we've got some tough fixtures to start. But you can see the team spirit from these games and we're on a winning run - long may it continue.'

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