Thanks to the gorgeous Coast Road sign next to the Wills Building railway bridge, I know off by heart that North Tyneside's twins include Halluin, Monchengladbach, some place in Denmark, another place in Senegal, and a few other places too. Newcastle's seven twins include Newcastle, Australia (imaginative) and Atlanta, Georgia, while Toronto's city siblings include Milan, Kiev, Frankfurt, Warsaw and Chicago.
The cities of Newcastle and Toronto, though not twinned officially, share a number of parallels. Both, for example, are world class metropolises shot through with rich heritage, breathtaking natural vistas (Wallsend Burn et al) and diverse, friendly, handsome populations. But more than this, Toronto and Newcastle share a curse: a giant, region-defining sports team that is at once its supporters' virtue and vice.
The Maple Leafs are the NHL's biggest and most valuable franchise, weighing in with a market value of more than $500m. They are one of the Original Six and, behind the Montreal Canadiens, one of the most successful teams in hockey history. Their fans are loyal to the point of blindness, games routinely selling out - despite steep ticket prices - while other franchises struggle. They are also utterly useless: they've haven't reached the playoffs since 2006, and their last Stanley Cup was brought home in 1967 (what Pierre Berton called "the last good year", and the last hockey season with just six competing teams).
Newcastle United, like it or not, are giants of the English game. Few teams have a history as illustrious, or a stadium as stunning. Like the Leafs, they haven't won a major trophy since the 60s (though the 2006 Intertoto Cup and the 2010 Championship title are technically silverware). Like the Leafs, they have their detractors; mardy regional neighbours and capital-based hacks alike, embittered by envy. Like the Leafs, they command the total devotion of their large, noisy and passionate fans. Like the Leafs, they are by far and away the greatest team the world has ever seen. Allegedly.
It is symmetry that came to a head yesterday as Newcastle crumbled to a 5-0 shellacking at Spurs and the Leafs went down 5-0 to the hated Canadiens on the same evening they honoured their all-time top scorer Mats Sundin. Cue shared, trans-Atlantic exasperations as the two sides forsook the momentum of surprisingly good seasons to date; the Leafs looking good for post-season, Newcastle still sitting as high as sixth despite comically-inept rivals Sunderland inviting Arsenal to town for a gentle run-around and three easy points (Sunderland recently signed Bridge, but what they'd really like is an airport. Or a cathedral).
And so the beat goes on: the Leafs flatter to deceive, and are more than likely to be on the wrong end of a playoff whitewash having cruelly raised the expectations of their long-suffering fans; Newcastle United, looking down the business end of the season, will ultimately run out of steam before owner Mike Ashley strips the team of its assets in a Summer Sale Spectacular. But in a funny way it wouldn't matter if they never lifted a trophy again: the Leafs and Newcastle United are the lovable losers that define their cities. After all, anybody can support glory, but it's not the winning that counts. Not really. Not if you think about it. To paraphrase Kipling: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two imposters just the same; then you are a Mag/Leaf, my son... Unlucky."
