This was the third game during a 4-games-in-4-days tour around my birthday in February 2017. I arrived on train from Bradford early afternoon, located my hotel down by the Tyne where I also had stayed on my previous two visits to Newscastle. 

I did a round of vinyl shops in the afternoon. In one of them, I was the day's best customer and got me a discount. The pub next-to-it, where I had an early dinner, also had a great Monday offer so I was quite pleased when I returned to the hotel to pick up my ticket and walk up to St James Park. 

This was a Monday televised game. A win would move Newcastle ahead of Brighton at the top of the Championship. This season NUFC would break the attendance record for the Championship with an average of 51,106. 17 times they would top 50,000 and this was one of those 17 games. The atmosphere was magical and, as I recall it, it took the large contingent of Villa supporters more than 15 minutes to be heard from my seat in the Milburn Stand's Paddock where I had a good view of Rafa Benitez and Steve Bruce's work at the sideline.

Villa were the better team for much of the first half and when The Magpies' top scorer Howard Gayle had to limp off with an injury, it didn't look too good. But at the end of the first half, Yoan Gouffran tapped in from close range after Villa couldn't clear a corner. From another corner, in the second half, NUFC scored again through a Henri Lansbury own goal. 

This was my second visit to St James Park. My first was two years earlier for a Sunday PL game when the mood at St James Park was much lower. St James Park was my 50th league ground.