the transition from Black & White to Blue & Red

Shearers soon?

Since my last (and first) blog nothing much has happened well I say nothing much only rumours that arguably the worlds second largest sportswear company were about to take over the naming rights of SJP.

The big worry that emerged from the whole thing was how it was greeted by a good number of our fans. “whey its not as bad as Sports Direct” or “quality, they might start selling Air Max’s in the club shop” were just two of the comments I heard. The 1st was the worrying one, that the threat of Sports Direct was enough to make many fans accept losing heritage. This got me worrying, was I wrong in the belief that he had no intention of selling the rights? was it all just a smoke screen to get fans accepting a sale of name to Nike? it definitely looked possible.

On reflection though, was it bollocks.

It was, no doubt the start of many false stories put about by the club to try and silence the critics, it wouldnt surprise me if within a few weeks we get a statement along the lines of “<insert name of random company here> were put off investing due to the way the fans reacted”.

Its not until you look at the setup of Sports Direct that you realise just why the Nike story was rubbish. Sports Direct headquarters contains a “Nike academy” and the 2010 Annual Report states “We are delighted to be creating a unique Nike Training Academy at our Shirebrook headquarters in partnership with Nike where Sports Direct staff will benefit from extensive, specialist training in the current Nike range as well as likely future developments. This is the first time Nike has joined with a retail partner in such a facility anywhere in the world. “

Add to that the fact that Puma would have been a little put out to say the least that their shirts were going to start carrying the Nike Swoosh and alternately, the Nike arena adorned with Puma cats? errrr no.

Sure enough within a couple of days the Sun’s Steve Brenner was reporting that there was “no truth in the rumour” and yet another story bit the dust. In the style of our esteemed Derek Llambias “Just do one”

Sports Direct will no doubt continue their relentless march across all things NUFC, Im going to make a prediction here so bear with me (hopefully Im as wrong with these as I was on NUFCs start to the season). Our club shops will slowly but surely disappear to be replaced by Sports Direct stores. When that happens we will have lost a major earner of our finances while SD will simply get bigger. Its already started, is it any coincidence that the first store to close is situated in direct competition to the biggest SD store in Newcastle? Whether that closure was purposeful or simply that the location could not compete when the next floor up was flogging our tops, shirts and socks at a 30% or so lower price remains to be seen.

The grounds club shop will be next, within a year Derek will annouce that “in these hard times it makes prudent business sense to share premises and therefore SD will be be taking over the lease” and allowing us to use a corner of it to sell nufc merchandise.