Yanks at Newcastle's St. James Park (from left) DOn Perelman, Chris Robb, Michael Beer, Steve Fillebrown and Charlie Overholser.

by Pete Mazzaccaro

It all started with a discussion on a long run in the Wissahickon. Mt. Airy residents Michael Beer and Steve Fillebrown were talking about their love of English football (that would be soccer) and the clubs they follow. For Fillebrown, it was Newcastle United. Beer had taken to Tottenham Hotspur. Born a year apart (Fillebrown is a year older) both men were a few years away from their 60th birthday. They wondered: Why not go to the UK and attend a few matches?

“It was a real bucket-list sort of plan,” Beer said.

“Yeah,” Fillebrown agreed. “We thought we deserved it.”

For any fan of English football, the connections aren’t as clear as they would be for any fans of local sports, where generally geography determines allegiances. For Fillebrown and Beer, those loyalties come from a real love of the sport and the more than 130 years of its history.

Beer’s Tottenham interest began in the early 90s when the father of a friend of his then kindergarten=-aged daughter shared his North London heritage and love of the team. That interest took off when NBC sports began showing nearly every Premiere League match in 2012.

Fillebrown coached and refereed the game for Chestnut Hill Youth Sports club for years. When NBC got the rights to the Premiere League, he decided to follow Newcastle, a choice that would later complicate his pilgrimage plans when the team was relegated at the end of the 2015/2016 season.

(For fans of American sports, promotion and relegation is a foreign concept. In the English Premiere League, the top flight of Football, the three teams with the worst record in the 20-team league are relegated to the 2nd division, called the Championship League. The best three teams in the 2nd division are promoted to the first. It prevents any team in football from being mediocre or poor on purpose (e.g. the Philadelphia 76ers plan of tanking on purpose to get better draft picks). For football clubs, failure comes with a heavy price.)

The idea to travel to the UK got rolling and Beer and Fillebrown shared it with members of their Monday Night basketball group, a group of men who play pickup basketball at the Plymouth Meeting Friends gym and follow it with a few beers at McMenamin’s in Mt. Airy afterwards. Friends Charlie Overholser and Don Perelman began to follow the Spurs because of Beer’s enthusiasm. Soon, the plan to make a football pilgrimage included Beer, FIllebrown, Overholser, Perelman and another Mt. Airy resident, Graham Robb, who was a fan of the game in his own right.

On Dec. 8, the group got on a plane bound for the UK with a 10-day itinerary that included matches at Newcastle, Tottenham and a London Derby (Derby referring to any replay of a close rivalry created by geography) between Chelsea and Crystal Palace.

Pilgrimage organizers Steve Fillebrown (left) and Michael Beer at London's rowdy Selhurst Park, home of London club Crystal Palace.

Getting tickets to all three matches proved to be easier than you might think.

“Graham discovered you could buy these international memberships to the clubs and those gave you the rights to purchase tickets before they went on sale to the general public,” Beer said.

Getting tickets to Newcastle, particularly because they’re a 2nd division team playing in a 54,000-seat stadium (large for the league),was simple. Fillebrown bought six tickets for about $30 a seat. Crystal Palace was a bit more pricey – about $50 a seat. Tottenham was a tougher buy, but mostly because the team is well followed and its London stadium, White Hart Lane, is under construction (it’s being fitted to host NFL football games).

“I had a connection,” Beer said. “A friend of a friend has a nephew who is a trainer for the team. He said he could get me and a friend in.”

Well when it came time and he needed five seats, it was a little too much. Instead Simon helped the group buy special suite tickets – about $250 per person – to get a box meal with good seats

“It was really worth it,” said Perelman. “Probably one of the best meals we had the whole trip”

All said they thought the trip was remarkable and wielded some really unexpected experiences. Newcastle might have been the most pleasant surprise.

“Newcastle was a real gem,” Beer said.

“It was much different than I would have expected,” said Perelman. “I thought it would be some old, dirty industrial town. Couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“The atmosphere was great,” Overholser said, adding that it was the first time he had experienced a real football atmosphere as the group walked to the stadium with the rest of the supporters on match day, a unique experience that is a big part of football culture.

For Fillebrown, a Newcastle supporter, the trip was made even better when he was interviewed by a local online fan website and held his own, offering knowledgeable answers on a host of questions from which keeper Newcastle should employ to which player from Sunderland – a natural rival of Newcastle – he’d most like to take (Jermaine Defoe being the natural answer).

“People were great,” Fillebrown said of the whole experience. “We were such a novelty – five Yanks in to see a 2nd division football match.”

‘It was a great trip,’ Beer agreed. “Every match exceeded my expectations.”

For more local takes on English football and MLS soccer, Fillebrown runs a fan blog called Booked for Simulation that can be found at bookedforsimulation.blogspot.com.

Pete Mazzaccaro can be reached at 215-248-8802 or pete@chestnuthilllocal.com