Living in the moment: Tom Allan on his Newcastle United debut

A few days have passed since Tom Allan’s competitive Newcastle debut and he is still in ebullient mood. “Do you know when I think it will sink in?” he asks rhetorically, in a moment of reflection that punctuates an otherwise light interview. “Sometimes I go to the local social club with my dad and my granda for a game of snooker, and I’ll go in there and see all my granda’s friends. They’ll just be chirping away, asking us hundreds of questions. I think that’s when I’ll be back down to reality. Do you know what I mean? I’m just on a bit of a buzz at the minute. Once everything settles down a bit, you’ll take a step back and think, ‘I’ve actually done that’. No-one can take that away from me now.”

Allan grew up in Seaton Delaval. He was a pupil at Astley Community High School when he joined United in 2012. Eight years on, the 20-year-old bristled with energy during his half-hour outing against Rochdale in the FA Cup third round replay, zipping around with intent, enthusiasm and, in the end, a little understandable weariness.

It was a lot quieter by the time he took his dogs, Oxo and Ozzy, out for a walk a few hours later. By the time he returned, with his mother Karen having gone to sleep, his father Mark was sitting on the sofa. Allan laughs as he remembers the scene; a little family celebration. “I just sat and had some cereal and just talked to my dad for ages, just like any lad would. I sat and had some Coco Pops with my dad,” he grins. “It was just a moment where you get to reflect on everything you’ve done. All those hard nights you’ve put in, and with my dad driving me to training every night after work, stuff like that… Just to reflect on all that, and think it’s the first step into something that could be great.”

He didn’t get much sleep. The following morning, he bumped into Steve Bruce during breakfast at the training ground, and he knew as much. “I must have looked a bit shabby. But after a night like that, it’s just something I wanted to stay up for.”

The day’s minutiae are still a bit of a blur to the former Cramlington Juniors youngster – it happened, it was fast, frenetic, and then over – but there were a few moments which will linger in the mind. Almost 60 minutes into the tie at St. James’ Park, and with the game effectively won, Stephen Clemence called his name as he warmed up down the touchline in front of the Milburn Stand.

“I was warming up and he shouted ‘Tom!’ – I turned round to check if there were any more Toms but there wasn’t,” jokes Allan, one of seven substitutes remaining at that stage, along with a Rob, Ciaran, Federico, Jetro, Jonjo and Andy. “And then in my head, I was thinking, ‘this is actually going to happen, in front of my family and everything’.”

Allan comes on in place of Jamaal Lascelles to make his Magpies debut against Rochdale

His parents, brother, girlfriend and grandad were in the crowd, dotted around the stadium. Allan was summoned to fill in on the right of a defensive five – something he had only limited experience of. He recounts the exchange with Bruce with a light-hearted humour that the young man wears well. “When I went to come on he went, ‘you’re going on on the right’, so I just thought he’ll obviously mean right midfield,” he says. “I went, ‘oh, are we going to a back four?’ And he went no, you’ll go wing-back – you’ve been there before, haven’t you?’

“I just went, ‘oh, yeah, yeah’ – just playing along with it. I wasn’t going to say no! But like I said in the interview after, if he’d asked me to go in goal I would have done it, just to get on.”

So on he went. His first few minutes tested him. “Honestly, I don’t know what was going on. I think I missed the first pass, took a touch out of play, and then after that I had a word with myself – ‘you’re here because you can do it’, do you know what I mean? Just calm down.

“I don’t know if it was Matty or Sean (Longstaff) early on who gave us the ball, but it’s on its way to us, and in my head I’m just thinking, ‘don’t mess it up, don’t mess it up’. I think it was the second time, I took a touch with the outside of my foot and it went out. I thought, ‘this is going to be a tough night’.”

He laughs again. “It was only about ten minutes in, and I was sprinting up and down trying to impress, and then the manager goes, ‘what’s wrong, are your lungs on fire?’

“And I went, ‘yeah!’ And he goes, ‘well, there’s still 20 minutes left!” I thought, ‘oh, God’…”

From there, Allan settled into the game’s rhythm, ticking off a few firsts along the way. Firstly, he was initiated into the senior game by Dale’s Jimmy Ryan by way of a clattering on the run, leaving him with a dead leg he would still be hobbling with the next day.

Then came the game’s enduring moment; Allan’s smart assist, rolled across the box for Joelinton to slot in Newcastle’s fourth of the night. “I thought me and Joe were the only people who were absolutely going mad,” he says. “Then I watched a clip back, and people are just jogging back. I’m thinking, ‘this is the best moment of my life!’

“Afterwards, Andy (Carroll) and everyone came up to us and said I’d done brilliant and stuff, so that was good. A goal would have been nice, but you can’t get too greedy, can you?”

The next box to be checked concerned a first booking. “Everything happened in half an hour! A long ball came in, Emil (Krafth) headed it down, and then I just seen three players charging at us. I think I tried to flick over all three of them because I didn’t know what to do, and I thought they were going to counter-attack, so I just ripped him down.

“And then after the game, I’m getting loads of messages saying, ‘brilliant assist – and the yellow card’. I’m thinking, ‘everyone’s going to remember the yellow more than the assist!’

“I was just caught in the moment, really. People were asking me a few days after, ‘what were they saying to you when you were about to go on?’, and I honestly can’t remember. I think you just go into your own little zone and think, ‘this is actually going to happen in front of everyone I know’, and you just kind of prepare yourself.”

"I think I missed the first pass, took a touch out of play, and then after that I had a word with myself – ‘you’re here because you can do it’, do you know what I mean? Just calm down."

Allan says being around the first team during pre-season helped him. He was part of the squad that travelled to China for the Premier League Asia Trophy, along with Kell Watts, Owen Bailey, Matty Longstaff and Elias Sørensen, prior to Bruce’s appointment. Then 19, Allan made his non-competitive bow against Wolves in Nanjing. “It was just a great experience to be out there, on the other side of the world. It’s not really somewhere I’d go on holiday, like, so it was just a great experience and it gives you a little bit of a taste for it.

“I’m really good friends with Elias – me and him spent a lot of time together, in each other’s rooms, and we were just looking round thinking, like, ‘this is just a mad experience’. If someone had told us three years ago when I met him, we’d be best friends and on tour with the first team… I don’t know. It’s just a surreal experience.”

Just over 20 minutes after coming on, Ruben Vinagre’s corner struck him as he stooped to head it. Then it struck the post, and then the netting. He grimaces. “I’m just so glad the Rochdale game’s happened, so now when I talk about my debut I don’t have to talk about the own goal,” he says. “I know we lost and it was a pre-season game, but now it’s just a laugh and a carry on with the lads – it’s all healthy banter. But now the Rochdale game’s happened, hopefully that will be in the past now. Hopefully…”

Allan was among the substitutes for Tuesday night’s game at Everton, and hopes for another cameo this afternoon. Eleven days ago, after his debut, he spent some time in the players’ lounge, soaking it all up, and put his phone away. Messages from all around – some from people his parents worked with, or even those he hadn’t spoken to for years – were flooding in, and he took them in the next morning. He shakes his head in wonder. “My dad and my grandad had a season ticket for 20-odd years. That’s one of the things (I thought about) after the game, when I was sitting with my dad at home, just thinking. He used to get on a bus when he was younger and go to watch every single home match, and now he’s seen his son play.”

The next time Allan heads to the Seaton Terrace Club and has a chat with some of the old boys over a frame or two, it might hit him. He already understands the precarious nature of the game he is making his way in; he has seen many of his contemporaries slide away from the professional level during his time at the academy, their love of the sport fading as reality punches hard.

“But this is my work,” he adds. Allan is the latest to tread this path, just like the Longstaffs before him, and he knows what he wants to do. “You don’t take anything for granted. There’s still a few of us here, but the majority of people have gone, and gone on to do other things. A lot of people have got normal jobs, so I think it just hits home that it’s not going to last forever. You need to live it while you can. In two years’ time nobody knows what’s going to happen. So just don’t take anything for granted, and live in the moment.”