I was 18, I wanted to be a first-year pro.

The outside noise is something I try not to listen to.

I know my brother will have my back every step of the way.

I am used to just playing football with my mates at Newcastle.

I haven't changed, I'm still the same lad who lives at home with my mam, brother and sister.

I used to come up to Scotland to see my uncle play and I would also watch him whenever he was on the TV.

A knee injury is never something you want, especially at the time that I got it. I was flying at the time.

Sometimes you can get distracted by figures that are thrown out there and you're doing things you wouldn't normally try to do.

There's not loads of people you can trust, so to have your brother out there alongside you, knowing he's got your back, is special.

I wanted to look back and say to those coaches, 'You're wrong, I'll be the one who kicks on and makes it'. Only I could change that opinion.

I speak to Matt Ritchie a lot, he's someone I lean on in the squad. He tends to keep us grounded and he's always there with good bits of advice.

If the team start picking up results, everything will look more positive and people will forget about the previous manager, as long as we're successful on the pitch.

I realised, 'I'm not going to dribble past five payers and score', so for me it was about having something different, and being two-footed was it. I pride myself on that now.

I was about five or six when I went to the little foundation camps. I got into the academy when I was nine, and I've gone through every age group since and into the first team.

I had a DVD and I think it was called 'Newcastle United: Flying High' in 2002 or 2003. I used to watch that all of the time, I think it was the year Shearer scored that famous volley against Everton.

I'm lucky to have my uncle there as he has been able to guide me through it a bit so I was not going into the unknown. He told me Scottish football is of a higher standard than a lot of English people expect.

I've always wanted to play for Newcastle, and I've only had a little taste of that, so for me, it's about getting fit as soon as I can and getting back on the pitch for Newcastle and making more memories of the future.

You start going to games when you're younger but you think it's the norm that every football club in the world has that many fans, but as you get older you realise they don't! And you realise just how big a club Newcastle is.

Playing regular first-team football is a massive carrot as I have been in the reserves for two or three years. I'm used to playing in front of two or three hundred people and now I could be running out in front of 40,000 or 50,000.

I had just broke in and everything was going so well, to have it all ripped away like that is not nice. That's part of football, and that stuff happens all the time. You go from the highest of highs, and then it's taken away and you're from there to rock bottom.

I think to be able to do it as brothers, it just doesn't happen a lot. It fills us with pride. Just before the game, I looked across at Matty and I thought how worldwide the Premier League is and to have two brothers from North Shields at 19 and 21 starting a game is pretty crazy.

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