With your mobile phone fully primed, getting a ticket to watch Newcastle United at St James’ Park in 2023 is a fully automated, digital experience.

In a very different world and at a very different stadium nearly 40 years ago, there were no such technical concerns for these fans queuing for good, old-fashioned paper tickets. It was May 1984, and with Magpies captain and soccer superstar Kevin Keegan announcing his retirement as a player having just successfully spearheaded United’s promotion back to football’s top flight, there was a huge clamour for tickets for the 33-year-old’s testimonial match.

The opponents for that game, on May 17, would be Keegan’s former club, Liverpool. On the night, goals from Terry McDermott and Keegan himself would earn United a 2-2 draw against the league champions. A Royal Marines marching band, a post-match lap of honour, and a gaggle of enthusiastic ball boys, including a certain 13-year-old local lad called Alan Shearer, were part of the spectacle.

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As Keegan dramatically exited St James’ from the centre-circle in a helicopter, the scoreboard at the back of the Gallowgate End flashed out the message ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Kev’ as thousands of fans waved an emotional farewell. We didn’t know it at the time, but Keegan would make a King Arthur-style return, this time as rookie manager, to help save the club a decade later.

As for our then-and-now images, the modern-day St James’ Park, having been totally redeveloped, is unrecognisable from its 1984 incarnation. Where the Milburn Stand proudly towers in 2023, back then the venerable old West Stand was still the club’s long-standing centre of operations.

Built in 1906, in the midst of Newcastle United’s Edwardian golden era, the stand was to be St James’ main seating area for decades, as well as home to the players’ dressing rooms, the boardroom, administration and press area. Its construction, at a final cost of more than £11,000, was part of ambitious improvements that would turn St James’ into one of England’s finest and biggest stadiums with a capacity of around 60,000.

If in the 21st century there are seats for 52,000 fans at St James’ Park, for many years, the ‘old stand’ was United’s sole seated and season-ticket area. Only 4,655 folk got to sit down.

Everyone else paid at the gate, and stood watching the match on the sprawling roofless terraces of the Gallowgate End and Popular Side - or the Leazes End, which mirrored the Gallowgate, but acquired a roof around 1930. It was only during the 1972-73 season, with the opening of the new cantilever East Stand, that more seating became available at St James’.

A relic from a bygone football age, by the 1980s, the old wooden ‘grandstand and pavilion’ was looking more than a little outdated and down at heel. The giant ‘Newcastle United’ lettering emblazoned along the length of the structure in an attempt to spruce it up had been added for the start of the 1971-72 season.

In 1987, two years after the Bradford City fire disaster, Newcastle United’s 81-year-old West Stand was finally demolished. Its replacement, the Milburn Stand, opened at a cost of £5.5m in January 1988, was named in honour of one of the club’s greatest sons. Since then, it has twice undergone major redevelopment as the stadium has evolved into one of the finest in the UK, and was recently chosen as a venue for the Euro 2028 tournament.