Beckham Beckham Beckham...

David Beckham slid unnoticed into Newcastle last week. You would have to have been looking really hard to notice this unheralded event.

Yeah right.

OK, the bloke came, he ran around for 90 minutes and over 23,000 people were there watching. It's easy to be cynical about it. I heard last week that he's overrated, he's washed up, there are many more talented football players in the world etc etc.

But really, who cares about David Beckham? People actually do. The girls think "he's the best looking man I've ever seen" (yes I heard someone say that), and you have to give him credit for his football skills, his precision placement of the ball. Even if he isn't at the standard that he once was, he's reasonably close. You have to credit him for staying on the pitch for the entire game too, despite being in some pain.

But whilst I was at the game watching him with great interest, I was also keeping a keen eye on Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle among others. And a good thing too, because they were the standout players for LA Galaxy along with Beckham. And it was nice to contrast their style of play against one of our A-League teams.

For football fans, it was being able to see an assortment of other players and some other big names playing as well. I was impressed to see Topor-Stanley keep the equally huge Buddle under wraps the entire game.

But it was a very strange experience for me, the football and the atmosphere seemed about half-baked for a lot of the game. After the Galaxy went up a goal from a pretty glaring defensive error, they seemed to stand off the Jets and let them play themselves into nice scoring positions for the rest of the first half. Maybe that was just my imagination.

The silence around the game also struck me as odd. I wasn't in my usual spot in the stand, and so being so much further away from the Squadron meant that I could hear much chanting. Or had the authorities changed the ticketing so that the Squadron couldn't be together? Someone please let the rest of us know. I would have loved to have seen a big Jets tifo there.

But a game like that is another great opportunity to see how the A-League compares with leagues from other regions. Sure, it's only a friendly, but that didn't stop Juventus making a mockery of Melbourne Victory when they visited there. And the Jets lads don't want to be made fools of. I don't think the LA Galaxy would have wanted to lose that game either, and as Wehrman said before the match, no matter how relaxed it might be, once they're out there, they're still men, and men want to win.

I noticed the urgency increase about halfway through the second half, when the trailing LA Galaxy probably realised that the jets weren't going to just give them an equaliser, and they would have to try (in a kind of unrushed way) to score on their own. It didn't happen and Jets fans went away happy, and rightly so.

Beckham fans probably went away happy too. He did his thing, strutted his stuff, had a few free kicks and corners and had some nice touches on the ball either striking or providing through balls. And threw his shirt into the crowd to some nice ladies who wanted to be bent with him (or something).

The only downside was that some of the Jets regulars weren't there, players that deserved their time getting some national and international airtime, Ben Kennedy and Sean Rooney in particular (since Milicevic, Bridges and Jeffers have no doubt played in some very big games). But for those downsides, there are silver linings for other players like Taylor Regan, Nash and some of the other young players who came in to replace regulars.

So all in all it was a good thing, it was fun, it probably brought a few more people to see the Jets who might not have seen them before. It might have even brought some non-core football fans along who liked what they saw and who might come again. Let's hope so. It was also good for Newcastle, if only fleetingly. I hope Nathan Tinkler had a good night.

One last thing I nearly forgot! Sasho Petrovski alright! Another poachers goal. That's two goals in two matches, and he was only a sub in the game against the Mariners. Let's see more of him.

So now we can put all this Beckham stuff behind us. It's all rather distracting us from the real show isn't it? Or is it?  Isn't this what football is all about? The theatre, the drama, the big personalities, the occasion? Yeah, it's all of that and it's the real competition too.

So now, back to your regular programming.