Newcastle United fan goes viral after being spotted on TV celebrating win after 'missing school'
Sammy Scott missed school to travel to London for the Carabao Cup semi final against Arsenal on Tuesday (7 January)
Last updated 10th Jan 2025
A 9 year old Newcastle fan's gone viral in TV coverage, after missing school to head to the Arsenal game.
Sammy Scott from North Tyneside travelled to London with his dad Mark for the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg on Tuesday - having told his school he wasn't going to be in that day.
But was he caught on camera, after being picked out by the Sky Sports cameras celebrating Anthony Gordon's goal in the 2-0 victory over the Gunners in North London.
His school saw his young face on TV... prompting them to send an email to his dad about his absence saying it would go down as 'unauthorised'.
Dad, Mark told us:
"Since September, Sammy’s only had one day off, so he's got quite good attendance and it was a huge game - it was a semi final. It might not come up again for a while, so I thought like, why not? So we decided to keep him off to take him."
Mark then shared the school's response on social media and it went viral.
"Well, I'm only on Facebook. I'm not on Twitter or Tiktok or anything like that, but the post managed to find its way on all platforms. People like Peter Crouch was sharing it and Warren Borton shared it too - a former Newcastle player.
"My daughter was showing us things on Tik Tok – they were getting millions of views and just we couldn't believe it. It was crazy really. The whole thing just blew up.”
Sammy says it was the best day:
"When Anthony Gordon scored, everyone ran to the front and was celebrating. Then it was just everyone had a great time and we're jumping about banging the boards and everything - it was really good.
"The whole game was really good. Especially the songs being sung in the stadium - it just echoed around."
We asked Sammy what it was like heading back into school:
"I thought my teacher would have been annoyed, but he was like giving us nicknames, calling me Celebrity Sammy because I’d been on the telly."
Mark added:
"Sammy is a bright kid. He's good at school, he's got good attendance. It’s not really going to affect his future. In my opinion, having one day off school, it's not something we do all the time.
"And to be fair to the school, I think it was just like a standard e-mail they sent out. And when we got it well, like a bit annoyed and quite shocked.
"But they've been really good with him since. When he went back to school and they've kind of seen the funny side of it really."