Pulling on the famous black-and-white shirt of Newcastle United has always been more than a case of getting the day job done for Dan Burn.
The boyhood Magpies fan has been living out his dream since his 2022 £13million move from Brighton back to his native north-east, as he rejoined the side that released him when he was aged 11.
Burn had grown up idolising Alan Shearer when he watched from the Gallowgate End as a boy, but little did he know he would one day be the butt of one of his hero’s well-intended jokes.
Dan Burn on his Alan Shearer jibe
The joke in question came at the end of a long day for Burn, who had been substituted on 64 minutes of a clash against Luton Town in February 2024.
Burn had given up a penalty that Carlton Morris dispatched to put the Hatters 3-2 up at St James’ Park, with the defender getting hooked when a fourth quickly followed. The eventful Premier League clash ended 4-4, in what was one of Burn’s toughest outings for the club.
Burn could have been forgiven for crying off a commitment he’d made to attend the Alan Shearer Foundation Ball that evening, a black tie event that raises hundreds of thousands of pounds every year for people with complex disabilities in the region. But the 6ft 7in defender was among the attendees, even if it gave Shearer a free hit.
“He said, ‘I’m glad Dan Burn’s turned up, because he didn’t turn up at 3pm!’” Burn smiles now, repeating the gag to FourFourTwo nearly two years later.
“I think that joke would have affected me a lot when I was a kid, because you haven’t got the experience behind you to realise ‘that’s football’.
“You can’t always be unbelievable, you’ll have those days and it’s just how you react. At the same time, I was like, ‘F**king hell, I’m going to the Alan Shearer Ball and that’s Alan saying my name!’
“It’s not the end of the world. I was going through a tough time, but it propelled me on.”
“He was later told that Shearer had tested out the joke on Steve Harper, now Newcastle’s academy manager. Harper vouched that Burn wouldn’t mind.
“It was all good with me,” Burn explains.
This resilience that Burn showed didn’t take long to pay off, as 13 months later, he had scored the opening goal in Newcastle’s historic Carabao Cup victory and made his England debut as a 32-year-old.
