There was a sombre soundtrack to Newcastle United’s home defeat against Everton on Boxing Day. The repeated choruses of “Pavel is a geordie” from a packed St James’ Park served as a grim reminder of Pavel Srnicek’s plight.
Shortly before Christmas the former Newcastle and Czech Republic goalkeeper, most recently a coach at Sparta Prague, suffered a cardiac arrest while out running. As he lay in a coma in an Ostrava hospital, his family played him recordings of that Tyneside choir singing his name in the increasingly forlorn hope of evoking a response.
Sadly Srnicek never woke up. He was only 47 when he died on Tuesday and the awful news prompted a wave of heartfelt tributes to one of the most popular players to have played in front of the Gallowgate End in recent decades.
Signed by Jim Smith for £350,000 from Banik Ostrava in 1991, Srnicek made 152 appearances for Newcastle across two spells on Tyneside and represented the Czech Republic 49 times, with Euro 2000 the highlight of his international career.
Given his Newcastle debut by Ossie Ardiles, Srnicek initially struggled to cope with English football – crosses particularly – and the language and it was not long before he surrendered his place to Tommy Wright. Few could have imagined that he would eventually replace the Robledo brothers as Newcastle’s longest-serving foreign player.
“At school under the communist regime we only learnt Russian, so speaking to the geordies for the first time was very hard for me to understand,” he explained during one of many frequent recent trips to Newcastle. “But they were so friendly.”
Things looked up when Kevin Keegan replaced Ardiles and he became an integral part of the side that swashbuckled its way back into England’s top division. Competing with first Mike Hooper and then Shaka Hislop, Srnicek remained an important member of Keegan’s famous “Entertainers” squad which came within touching distance of winning the title in 1995-96.
By then he had settled in the Newcastle suburb of Gosforth and was regularly spotted playing football with his young daughter in the local park. An already warm relationship with his new public was cemented when, during a lap of honour following a famous 7-1 thrashing of Leicester City, he pulled up his goalkeeping jersey to reveal a T-shirt emblazoned with “Pavel is a geordie”.
“Pavel was the fittest bloke I ever knew and more importantly one of the nicest men,” his former team-mate Rob Lee told the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. “It was a joy to spend time with him. He kept himself to himself, he was happily married, didn’t really drink, didn’t really smoke, he was one of the hardest trainers. I never saw him angry really. He was just such a genuinely nice guy. The geordies loved him and he loved them.
“From the minute I arrived in the north-east, all the fans ever sang was ‘Pavel is a geordie’. He is very much one of their own. He loved being in Newcastle. He loved the area and he loved the people.”
Somehow this son of an Ostrava woodcutter who had grown up under communist rule and began his working life with a stint in the Czech army had become an adopted geordie.
Newcastle fans loved the way he spontaneously applauded them and his willingness to take risks with the ball at his feet as he encouraged his team-mates to build from the back.
He briefly returned to Banik Ostrava in 1998 and stintswith, in no particular order, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham, Portsmouth, and Brescia, Cosenza and Beira Mar followed. Then, in 2006 Glenn Roeder brought him back to Newcastle for a season as cover for Shay Given and Steve Harper. The three were firm friends with Harper adamant he would never have made the professional grade without the Czech’s unstinting support and mentoring.
The shock on Tyneside is intensified by the fact that only a week before his collapse, Srnicek was in Newcastle promoting a new autobiography co-written with his friend, the writer Will Scott. It could only ever have one title: “Pavel is a geordie”.
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