The last time Newcastle United reached a major semi-final we were just starting to get to grips with the digital age.
As fans head off for the next big semi-final, some 18 years later, many of them will be doing so with their adult kids and with the digital revolution in full swing - it's really been that long! Since then iPods have been and gone, The Pink stopped printing the year after 2005, Oasis split up and never reformed, Newcastle have had three different owners and it's been 16 years since smoking was banned in pubs.
OK, most of us had mobile phones by that time but by the turn of that year 2005 we were probably all still in the practice of sending "Happy New Year, just texting before it all goes mad" type messages at about 8.30pm on New Year's Eve because mobile phone networks couldn't cope with the demand!
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Eddie Howe had played as right-back for AFC Bournemouth in League One in a 3-2 win over Chesterfield the day before while Arsenal were champions of England after picking up their Invincibles tag, Jose Mourinho had amazingly guided FC Porto to the Champions League and Greece had won the European Championships a year earlier.
That last semi-final is so long ago, Youtube had not even uploaded its first video, which came five days later (about some bloke going to the Zoo) and if you really want to know Is This the Way to Amarillo by Tony Christie was number 1 in the UK Charts. We'd all survived the turn of the year to see in 2000, but fast forward half a decade on and Newcastle had a Millennium bug of their own to contend with.
Just days after squandering a 2-0 aggregate lead against Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and crashing out of the UEFA Cup in the quarter-finals, Graeme Souness and his players jetted straight into Cardiff for the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United to play in front of 69,280 at the Millennium Stadium with Wembley still a construction site at that time and the Twin Towers long gone, every Newcastle fan who wanted a ticket got one given the size of the venue in the Welsh principality.
But those ticket stubs, possibly lying in lofts and garages on Tyneside, were nothing more than painful souvenirs. A quick recollection of the day is pretty much, Newcastle were awful and Shola Ameobi scored a consolation in Cardiff.
The game was as good as settled by half-time as Ruud van Nistelrooy and Paul Scholes made it 2-0 before the break. The Dutchman netted another after the break before Shola gave fans something to at least cheer.
But Ronaldo put the lid on it and Newcastle escaped with a 4-1 beating. After the game controversy surrounded Laurent Robert who'd stated that Newcastle had "gone backwards" compared to previous campaigns in which they'd finished in Champions League positions.
Despite being spot on with his comments, and some months after Sir Bobby Robson was sacked for finishing fifth, Robert's mild remarks prompted Souness to deflect two cup knockouts in a week and say: "He has apologised to the players. "We've played two games and travelled to Lisbon since they last played and, given our suspensions and injuries, it was always going to be a difficult afternoon's work for us.
"We'd have liked to have played with everybody fit and rested and that wasn't the case. But I can't be critical of any of my players. We've been bashed up physically and mentally on Thursday and after that sometimes it takes you 45 minutes of football to get your legs going."
Souness wouldn't be going for another six months when an alarming slide into the relegation zone resulted in him being sacked and replaced by Glenn Roeder. The wait for a semi-final has been too long for Toon supporters but here we are, let's hope the next one doesn't take another 18 years!
For the record here's the team that lost 4-1 to Man United last time out in a semi-final: Given, Carr, Boumsong, Taylor, Babayaro (Andrew O'Brien 45), Milner (Kluivert 63), Faye (N'Zogbia 45), Butt, Robert, Ameobi, Shearer.
Subs Not Used: Harper, Ambrose.
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