Football: Shearer helps the medicine go down

Striking difference: Newcastle look to England talisman to transform a troubled season as Wolves gamble on underdogs' champion; Simon Turnbull assesses the mood of a player at last on the brink of personal glory

IT SEEMS such a long time since the homecoming parade at St James' Park. Newcastle came to a standstill that day. There were 20,000 in the Leazes End car park alone. They had all come to see the trophy - the pounds 15m trophy. He was decked in black and white and displayed on a special stage. He spoke of winning trophies (the silverware kind) and of staying at St James' for the rest of his career. But times have changed, and changed quickly, for Alan Shearer and Newcastle United. The three gentlemen who sat to his immediate left at that open-air press conference have all since departed. The fear on Tyneside is that Shearer - like Kevin Keegan, Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall - could soon be gone too.

Should Newcastle lose their fight for Premiership life (and a run of seven win-less matches does not bode well for their survival prospects) nobody would expect their most striking asset to return from captaining his country in the World Cup finals to a season of hard labour at Crewe, Swindon and other points Nationwide. Shearer has never played outside England's top flight and, at 27, he is unlikely to do so now - unless, that is, he follows the lure of the lira or the pull of the peseta. Even if Newcastle remain in the Premiership beyond 10 May, when their league campaign ends with the small matter of a trip to Ewood Park, they might still be shorn of their Shearer. Only the player himself knows how much he has been unsettled by recent events at St James'. The suspicion among the Toon Army is that Shearer's pride has been wounded by his portrayal as a figure of fun.

Mr Shepherd and Mr Hall may have fallen on their boardroom swords, after much prompting, but they remain the major shareholders in a club which once coveted him as the world's most valuable player and which, through its chairman, last month pilloried him as the Mary Poppins of football. Shearer has played a typically straight bat in public, claiming "it has not been a distraction". But it remains to be seen whether he has been truly hurt. Juventus and Barcelona will certainly be interested to find out when Newcastle's season of turmoil ends. Manchester United might too.

Shearer revealed in his autobiography, published last week, how close he came to moving to Old Trafford 20 months ago. In allowing his heart to rule his head, as he put it, he became the pounds 15m trophy Tyneside flaunted in Alex Ferguson's face and a reviled figure to Manchester United followers. This afternoon, though, the Theatre of Dreams will not quite be a pit of hate for the man who spurned Fergie not once but twice. Shearer will have 25,000 fellow Geordies in the audience, all hoping for a spoonful of sugar, if not a Mary Poppins performance.

Newcastle, for all their travails of late, stand within two games of the major trophy that has long been their Grail. Their last prize of note, the Fairs Cup, was won in 1969. Their most recent domestic success dates back to the FA Cup final of 1955. Shearer, for all his troubles this season, is on the brink of personal glory too. The Premiership medal he won with Blackburn three years ago is the only club honour he has gained in 10 years as a professional. A Newcastle side victorious just twice in 18 Premiership matches against a Sheffield United team sixth in the First Division might not be the stuff of the nation's FA Cup dreams but for Shearer today's Old Trafford tie represents a first. He has never played in a semi-final before.

The closest he got was six years ago, when Southampton lost to Norwich in a sixth-round replay - after creating a little piece of FA Cup history at Old Trafford in the fourth round. Shearer converted one of the kicks that sealed Manchester United's fate as the first top- division team to be knocked out of the competition on penalties. The prize this afternoon is a Wembley appearance with the club he once cheered from the Gallowgate End. And Newcastle last played in an FA Cup final long before Shearer's time on the terraces at St James'. He was only three, in fact, when a certain Kevin Keegan scored twice in that 3-0 stroll for Liverpool in 1974.

"It's a massive game for us," Shearer said on Thursday morning, facing the cameras, the tape-recorders and the note-books before his manager at Newcastle's weekly press conference. "If any set of supporters deserve success it's ours. It would be a massive shame to fall at the final hurdle. But it'll be a tough game. Sheffield United are in the semi-finals because they deserve to be there. They've got some tough players. It certainly isn't going to be easy."

It was typical Shearer form behind the microphone. Typical Shearer form on the pitch has been more elusive in the past 11 weeks. Since emerging from the treatment room in January, Shearer has scored five goals in 14 games. It is not a bad return, but four of those goals have been plundered against lower league opposition in the FA Cup. In 10 Premiership appearances this season, two as a substitute, Shearer has scored one goal. "It is not a record Alan has known before," Kenny Dalglish acknowledged after another blank night for his lone attacker and for his team, against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park on Tuesday. "He's scored 30 most seasons. But he's still very valuable to us. We're fortunate to have Alan back playing at all."

Shearer, indeed, has done well to recover so quickly from the pre-season slip at Goodison Park in which, to quote the full catalogue of damage, he ruptured two sets of ligaments, displaced an ankle joint, fractured a fibula and chipped an ankle bone. And, it has to be said, his attempts to regain form have not been helped by having to forage for scraps of possession in a struggling team. "It's for other people to judge me," he said on Thursday. "The most important thing is I feel good. I feel fit, confident. I couldn't feel better."

The judges have suspected otherwise, pointing to the fractious mood evident throughout the Stevenage saga and in the wrestling bout which prompted George Graham to accuse Shearer of "assaulting" Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. But readers of his autobiography will appreciate he has not always been a paragon of Poppins virtue. The Angel of the North, as Shearer is depicted in the latest edition of The Mag fanzine, once hit his sister because she would not let him watch a football match on television, skipped a few lessons in his final year at school and indulged in some under-age drinking the night he scored a hat-trick on his full debut for Southampton. So the one-time Saint has been a sinner. More pertinently, having been taught to intimidate defenders by Chris Nichol and to clatter goalkeepers by John Burridge, he has always been the ultimate trouble-shooting professional too. As he put it: "I don't take any notice of the flak because I have a job of work to do. If all these people are criticising me I must be doing something right."

Shearer will be a happy man if half of Old Trafford is screaming for his blood this afternoon - the red and white half, that is. Whatever the result, the other half will be wondering whether they will still be seeing him in black and white next season.