Newcastle United

Newcastle United began as the winter occupation of a cricket club. Members of Stanley Cricket Club formed a football section to keep the ground in use once the summer game ended, becoming Newcastle East End in 1882 to avoid being mistaken for another team in County Durham. Financial trouble a decade later forced a merger: in 1892 East End absorbed its city rival, Newcastle West End, and on 9 December that year the combined club took the name it has carried since. The paperwork followed on 6 September 1895, when Newcastle United Football Club Co. Ltd was formally registered.

The black-and-white stripes needed no invented origin for the nickname that followed — the Magpies, worn now at St James' Park, which holds 52,729. Four league titles were won before the Second World War, the last of them in 1927. Jackie Milburn scored 201 goals and lifted the FA Cup twice, in 1951 and 1952, and Alan Shearer became the reference point for the generation after him: 206 goals in all competitions and the captaincy through the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Sunderland supplies the fixture that matters most, the Tyne–Wear derby.