THERE can’t be many better moments to experience in football than striking a 25-yard winner on your Premier League debut against Manchester United, having heard your brother standing just behind urging you to shoot.

The celebrations, in front of the Newcastle United fans who refer to them both as ‘one of their own’, said it all. Such memories will never be forgotten at St James' Park.

As Matty Longstaff charged, with his beaming smile and clenched fists, towards the corner, he was swamped by his team-mates. DeAndre Yedlin was barged out of the way by Sean, who apologised soon after, because there was no way he was going to miss out on being involved in that moment of enormous family pride.

What a feeling, suddenly all of those younger years of sibling rivalry and fighting seemed worthwhile. As they sat alongside each other at Newcastle’s Longbenton training complex to reflect on things, the love the pair have for one another was clear to see.

“I think it was a better feeling than when I scored my first goal against Burnley,” said Sean. “Just the occasion, him being so young and it being his debut, knowing everything he has been through to get to that point when he was younger. He was turned away by Newcastle when he was ten or 11, but he fought back.

“I was in the car with him when he was rejected on the way home and he was crying. From that night, he said nobody is going to be able to do this to me again. He worked so hard, he probably does work harder than me. I look at him and if I could work as hard as he does, I don’t know where I could get to.

“It felt like everything had been building to that moment he scored. It was unbelievable and even now I get a bit emotional talking about. I can’t remember what I said to him on the pitch afterwards, I just grabbed him.”

Matty, wearing his Newcastle crested training gear, stared at Sean with a smile as he talked, taking it all in and reflected on that time aged 11 when he felt that was it.

He said: “It was one of the toughest things you can go through as a kid. We have supported Newcastle since we were little. I remember Middlesbrough and Sunderland constantly asking us every year to come and join them and my dad saying ‘he wants to go to Newcastle.’

“I finally got the chance to come in and train with them. It was a four-week thing and it was in here (the room the interview is taking place) and they pulled me and one other kid in here and said, ‘look, thanks for coming, but we’re not going to keep you …’ I walked out crying. When you look back at it, it probably fired me up to get where I am. It really pissed me off. Looking back, being able to do what I’ve done since then, it all comes from that moment.”

As the older, taller brother, Sean is a couple of years wiser, he says. Although that was not always the case, as they tended to end up at each other’s throats and clashing on a pitch in a black and white shirt – thankfully a a thing of the past.

“We got the fighting out of the way when we were younger!” he said. “We used to fight a lot and my mam, Michelle, had to go into Newcastle and Newcastle had to have a word with us to say you need to behave at home and stop fighting!

“We’d be playing a game and whoever lost would start trying to fight the other one, and it escalated from there. There were no major proper ones where we were bleeding and stuff! A lot of it was one would go at the other one and the other one would run at the one who had started it.”

Those disagreements have become even more less frequent. Sean has moved into his own apartment, leaving Matty at home with his mum, Michelle, and rising netball star of a sister, Milly.

“Probably Matty would win fights now!” joked Sean. “He was the tougher one growing up. Probably when we were younger to when we 13-14, then we grew out of it. Football became a bigger part of our lives. We realised we had to help each other more than fight each other.”

And learning to have each other’s back as brothers is now driving them on to success at Newcastle, where the win over Manchester United will never be forgotten for being the day the two combined for Matty to hit the winner. It could, though, have quite easily have been on a cricket pitch where they shone professionally.

“Matty was the best cricketer,” said Sean, a bowler for Tynemouth. “I used to spend hours bowling at him and couldn’t get him out.” Matty added: “I remember about Under-13s, I wasn’t doing so well, cricket I was doing really well. People were saying I could see you going to the top. I told my dad I might concentrate on cricket and he gave me a clip round the ear for saying it as if to say ‘there’s not a chance that’s happening.”

Both could have ended up playing for Durham. Sean said: “That was just recently in the last couple of years, when I'd grown I did get better at cricket and there was a finals day at Tynemouth. Some of the Durham coaches were asking the lads at Tynemouth 'who's that? Does he want to come and have a trial?'

“I think when they asked the guys from Tynemouth they laughed and said 'if you can persuade him to leave Newcastle and come and play cricket then best of luck to you!' It's great to have other options in other sports but this is what we've always wanted to do.”

Yet ice hockey could easily have been the route they ended up taking, courtesy of their dad David’s background as forward for the Whitley Warriors among other clubs.

Matty said: “He signed for Djurgardens in Sweden. If we'd stayed there, we might have ended up playing ice hockey over football but we ended up coming back because Sean started school ...”

Instead the Longstaffs are heading to Stamford Bridge this Saturday, where Sean made his Premier League debut last season and this time around he will have his brother in tow.

“I didn’t end up going there last year to watch him. I went to Liverpool to watch. It was my dad at Stamford Bridge, my dad getting smashed again I think!” said Matty.

Sean added: “It was surreal that game for me. It is a massive club which has had a lot of success. It had some of the best players in the world so for me to look across in the tunnel and see them, it was pretty crazy.

“I just remember thinking how far I had come, and I suppose that’s how Matty will have felt last weekend. We go there this time together and I can’t wait … hopefully we will both be playing but that’s up to the manager.”