Grand old lady of the Magpies

Groups of men joined together by their love of the Magpies, kids sporting club scarves and Mark Knopfler's Local Hero anthem thumping out as a rallying call to the crowd.

All pretty ordinary stuff. But home in on seat K87 and you'll see a diminutive old lady bundled up in layers of woollens, sitting with hands neatly folded on her lap. At the age of 90, Helen McKendrick Crute is one of Britain's oldest football fans and has been faithfully turning out to home games for three quarters of a century.

Looking at her, you'd never believe it. She looks the type of woman who'd be more finely versed in the intricate art of needlepoint than talking about the technical skill required of a centre-half or a striker.

Dressed in a powder pink silk shirt and a smart pleated skirt with a pinny over the top, she pours the tea and opens the biscuit tin before she sets herself down in the cosy front room of her home in Jesmond, Newcastle.

Delicate and dignified, you can't really picture her whooping and hollering on the terraces of St James' on a Saturday afternoon. But then Helen has never whooped nor hollered, though she insists this hasnot taken away from her love of the beautiful game.

"I'm not the kind of woman to wave my arms around and shout or chant songs. That's not really my scene," says Helen good-humouredly. "I will sometimes applaud them but on the whole, I'll sit and enjoy the match quietly. There's a group of men who sit in front of me who get out of their seats a lot to cheer so they do my shouting for me," says Helen, a retired secretary to Newcastle City Police's Chief Constable in the 1940s. "When they jump up, I just have to remember to tuck in my toes because you can get them caught."

And while she doesn't wear her love of the club on her sleeve - she doesn't buy any of the merchandising and doesn't even own a Newcastle United mug, let alone a strip - she knows more about the intricacies of football that your average, bona fide footie-fan.

"I lost my Milburn Stand seat of 70 years when it was bought out in a block. I was upset at the time but where I sit now is nearer the action on the pitch. I understand the sport and I can appreciate the skilfulness of the movements from a closer view now," says Helen, widow of George Crute, who died two years ago.

She generally avoids the ritual analysis and deconstruction of a game after watching it, but get her on the subject of skill and she's got just as many informed opinions of the game as the most steadfast of fans.

"Manchester United are undoubtedly the strongest team at the moment... Just because a team is low down in the League table doesn't mean it is rubbish. No team is rubbish, it's all about how much money it has poured into it... Football has just as much great talent now as it did. There are the Alan Shearers and Rob Lees of today for the Frankie Brennans and Jackie Milburns of the past."

Meanwhile, there are very few things that make Helen furious but she gets pretty het up when the boys are sloppy on the pitch. It's not losing a game that winds her up - she's seen enough losses - it's when the team doesn't try as hard as it could.

"If they've done their best and lost, you can't ask for any more. But it makes me furious when we lose because the team hasnot been as skilful as it could've been. You can see the things they're doing wrong in a game and they're not putting them right," says the veteran fan.

Books on the creation of Newcastle United Football Club are strewn around her living room and she's got a fat file full of pictures of teams dating back to the late 19th Century, old tickets, programmes of all the important games she's been to - including Jackie Milburn's testimonial - matches which to us are history, but to her, lived experience.

Ironically, Helen only started off going to see the matches after her father died and she inherited his season ticket and his ten-shilling shares at the age of 19. Her grandfather, George Taylor Milne, was on the committee that negotiated the amalgamation of Newcastle West FC and Newcastle East FC to make the team what it is today and he was Club chairman for a time. As one of the founders, he was also one of the few shareholders then, which automatically earned him a free season ticket, which he passed on to Helen's father, and which, in turn, came to her. "Things were quite different then. There were only about 2,000 shares and some holders held over 100 of them."

She remembers being taken to a game for the first time as a five-year-old in 1916 by her grandfather.

"I only have two images of that day in my mind. The first is standing outside the Milburn Stand, which was wooden, and watching my grandfather talk to the then club secretary Frank Watt. The other is of us inside the director's box. The chairs were rather like old-fashioned church pews, made of wood with high backs and felt seats."

Coming from a sporting family - her uncles were passionate about cricket and one, William Milne, was a professional - she was sporty herself but wasn't particularly fussed about football for most of her teen years. "I used to love playing golf, netball and hockey and I was mad about tennis, but I wasn't really interested in football until I got the season ticket."

She was one of the very few young women to turn out to a game but if that was regarded as unusual or unconventional, she was impervious to other people's judgements.

"I don't know if I was that unusual. My female friends weren't interested in football. They were more interested in boys, I should think. But everyone at the stadium treated me very nicely and I think I was seen as just any other supporter. Even now, I'm treated just like the others. I don't know if the football chants are toned down for my benefit, but even if they aren't, I don't hear them.

"The crowd I sit with are very welcoming. Whenever they see me climbing up the terrace stairs and stopping for breath, a few of the men will come and help me up to my seat."

Helen says there was a time when she went to the Club's Annual General Meeting in 1929 when she was amused to read about her own attendance in the local paper the next morning. She shows me the cutting: "A member of the fairer sex graced the AGM last night," it reads.

As far as the glamour attached to the game goes, there was little of that in her day. She bumped into many of the players during the 1950s at her golf club in Gosforth where they also played, and she exchanged pleasantries with Jackie Milburn on many an occasion.

"Football was not really as glamorous as it is now and it wasn't big money. The players were just players, and were on a fixed salary of £12."

She looks back to the footballers of the 1950s and considers it the era she found most thrilling. She saw the three Cup Final wins of the 1950s, travelled to Wembley and went to the post-match dinners the club threw for players and shareholders. But while these evening dos were plush, they resembled none of the opulence associated with football clubs now.

"Women wore afternoon dresses and the menus had roast chicken and peas on them. That's as glamorous as it got."

But despite the changes Helen's witnessed over the decades, United is still 'her' team and she'll go to every home match come hell or high water.

Getting to the Boxing Day match was difficult last year. There were six inches of snow outside her house and the prospect of a long, slushy walk to the Metro station wasn't a pleasant one, but Helen doesn't give up easily.

Which is why she defied the weather, and why, if you'd looked across the wintry pitch to seat K87, you'd have seen her there, woolly hat on and toes tucked in neatly, just so.