It was July 1986, and these Newcastle United players were in high spirits as they headed off for a pre-season tournament on the Isle of Man.
The season proper was just weeks away and the three games in the land of Manx would see them line up against Blackburn, Portsmouth and an Isle of Man XI, before they crossed over to Ireland for games against Coleraine and Linfield.
Thirty-five years on, United fans of a certain vintage will have no trouble in naming the lads on the photograph.
READ MORE: 10 photographs of Newcastle in 1973
From left, we have goalkeeper Martin Thomas, striker Joe Allon, full-back John Bailey, skipper Glenn Roeder, midfielder David McCreery, full-back Brian Tinnion, the irrepressible Paul Gascoigne, and winger Ian Stewart.
The squad also included the likes of Kenny Wharton, Tony Cunningham, Billy Whitehurst, Paul Stephenson and Neil McDonald.
On their 200-mile haul to the land of Manx, the players would have been reading in their newspapers about the recent royal wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson; while current chart hits such as Happy Hour by The Housemartins, Venus by Bananarama, and Dancing On The Ceiling by Lionel Richie would have been staple fair on their Sony Walkman cassette players.
Despite the presence of of Gazza and Peter Beardsley, who had shot to prominence with England at the recent World Cup finals in Mexico, the 1986-87 season would be one of struggle.
Then, as now, Newcastle United did things on the cheap and were a club seemingly without purpose other than to survive in the top flight.
Under manager Willie McFaul, an opening 2-0 home defeat to Liverpool on August 23 set the tone.
Fans had to wait until mid September to see the team's first win, a 1-0 win over Wimbledon at St James' Park, courtesy of a Paul Gascoigne goal.
Come February, 1987, United were rock bottom of the league and relegation beckoned.
Enter centre-forward Paul Goddard from West Ham for a club record £415,000.
Scoring in seven successive games, the Londoner’s priceless goals helped earn victories over the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea as United recovered to finish a heady 17th in the First Division.
Tyneside breathed a sigh of relief as the Magpies narrowly escaped the drop, with Leicester, Manchester City and Aston Villa all plunging into Division Two. (How times change!)
But the bigger picture for Newcastle United wasn't so bright. The club had little money or ambition - and Peter Beardsley would be gone at the end of the season, moving on to bigger and better things at Liverpool.
With another gifted Geordie star Chris Waddle having exited to Spurs in 1985, and with young prodigy Paul Gascoigne set to follow him to White Hart Lane in 1988, these were bleak times for the Magpies.
Many of us will have theorised (probably with mates in the pub) about a United dream team at the turn of the 1990s featuring Gascoigne, Waddle and Beardsley, alongside a young Alan Shearer and rising local talent such as Lee Clark, Steve Howey and Steve Watson.
It was never to be - and instead at the end of a disastrous 1988-89 season, Newcastle United were relegated.
Don't forget to check out our Memory Lane local history website that's packed with archive photographs and has an easy-to-use picture colourisation tool.
