I lifted this off nufc.com. The potential for a trip to Belgium is appealing too. Pre-season update From NUFC, Friday: Newcastle United will travel to Ireland in July for a week-long pre-season training camp. The Magpies will be based in County Kildare from Saturday 9th to Saturday 16th July, where they will step up their preparations for the 2016/17 Skybet Championship season. At this time there will be no fixtures during the training camp, however the Club are in the advanced stages of finalising a number of friendlies for elsewhere in the pre-season campaign.United prepared for the 2009/10 Championship season by training at Carton House in Maynooth, County Kildare before facing Shamrock Rovers in Dublin. When they returned to Carton House for pre-season in 2010 however, no games in Ireland were scheduled. please log in to view this image Media outlets in Belgium claim that Newcastle are to face Sporting Lokeren at their Daknam Stadium as part of our pre-season preparations. The game is claimed to be set for Saturday July 23rd with a kickoff of 5pm local time - although there's no confirmation of the fixture from either club as yet. United previously visited Lokeren for an Intertoto Cup tie back in July 2001, running out 4-0 winners before beating the Belgians 1-0 on Tyneside a week later. Sporting remain in the top flight of Belgian football and finished eleventh last season. Their current manager Georges Leekens was in charge of Club Brugge the last time we visited Belgium, in November 2012. No strangers to the venue are our trio of ex Belgian League players Cheick Tiote, Chancel Mbemba and Aleksandar Mitrovic all having played there - Mitro netting for Anderlecht in his last two visits. News of possible pre-season opponents from the Chronicle includes visits to Premier League new boysBurnley and League Two-bound Doncaster Rovers. A home game against a team tbc leading up to the opening weekend of the Championship season on August 6th has also been mentioned.
I used to live in Antwerpen which is a few miles to the North East of Lokeren and I have to recommend that city as the place to go in all of Belgium. And if anyone thinks that Newcastle is a drinky town then they're in for a hell of a shock. If you can get over to stay in one of the most bonkers of the towns in Flanders then do go it's a great place to visit. I daren't go because I'd never leave after staying there for seven years after going for a few weeks back in the eighties...
At least there not jetting all over the globe to simply advertise Sports Direct. It's good to see a planned pre season that's for the benefit of the squads development, preparation and fitness levels. It's pretty quiet in the media too, with only a few rumours floating about. I like this, as it seems to be indicative of the changes we all so desperately needed to see.
Its not full of Jihadi`s is it? Belgium isn`t the safest place in Europe at the minute. Why not go the whole hog and arrange a match with Raqqa United or Mosul FC? Still the boozy culture sounds appetising.!
Antwerp is massively multi-cultural as you may imagine given that, at one time, it had the world's biggest docklands. Yes, it has a Moroccan quarter but then again it has a Russian quarter which used to be interesting to visit even before the Wall came down. There is a huge diamond centre there (you've seen the start of the film, Snatch, I presume) and thus a massive Jewish section around the station. Antwerp is the most relaxed of cities and near where I used to work was a bar, La Justice (I think), which is open all the time. It last closed during the war and since then it's been going 24 hours and day. Some bars, particularly around the two main squares, open at 9am and close at 5pm, some open at noon, some open at around eight and finish late in the morning and one of my favourites was 'Jean Jacques' (named after the Moroccan owner) opens at midnight and I have been there at nine and ten in the morning in the past. That place doubles for the Cantina in the first proper Star Wars film. Only a complete idiot can fail to find a bar open at any time of the day or night in the centre of town, particularly in the old town. On a personal note, on day in the eighties I took my father to the bar that three of my mates owned nearby the river. He looked at the building and said "You know, I was billeted here in the war..." The only fear you ought to have from visiting Antwerp is that you have only one liver. And if you're interested in culture then the history, particularly art history, is massive there. Rubens, van Dyke, the Brugels and others all came from there. A small city with lots of character and is worth visiting. Part of me wants to return for good this time. There isn't a city like it in the world.
