Its not a Megastore its our Mecca

Well what do you know, I’ve now got a blog. Some may think that’s a good thing, others will know that my inane thoughts, rants and general diatribe should be kept in the pub or limited to snippets posted on toontastic.net. So why did I feel the need to blog? Three words Direct, Arena & Sports. Two of those words have brought me a feeling of nausea for the last 3 years of so. Add the word Arena on the end and you’ve lit the blue touchpaper as far as I’m concerned.

I grew up with St James’ Park, so did my dad, his dad & grandfather. In fact on checking the family tree 6 generations of my family name have been alive during it’s existence (7 if you count my 22 month old). 4 of those are no longer with us, maybe death has saved them the horror the rest of us are set to witness.

St James’ has seen and survived it all, 2 world wars, German bombers, Thatcher even lord Westwood. None of them ever managed to destroy it. The previous owners even managed to turn it from a fairly ramshackle stadium into one of the 6th largest in the country. Along comes a tubby market stall owner who decides that history is irrelevant when in search of the next profit.

Profit, turnover, whatever way you want to look at it. The answer is still the same, our chairman, the honourary Mr Llambias is quoting an expectation of £8-£10m per season being paid for this. Now I can go with the logic that everything has its price, although at the time I got worked up about it, on reflection the sale of Carroll was an amazing piece of business, £35m for such an unknown quantity was frankly taking the piss out of the mourners. Its just a shame that we’ve not seen much (if any) of that figure being invested in the team.

When it comes to heritage, history and identity then that’s a different matter. Players come, players go, managers, chairmen, owners too but three things at any football club should remain static while the actual physical items exist. The clubs name, team colours and stadium. Maybe you could tempt me with an offer of £150m to be invested in the team, maybe then Id say “ahhh bollocks to it, I’m happy to see Messi play at the Bodyform bowl” when however you’re quoting me the equivalent worth of Andy Carrolls right arm it’s a different matter.

I’m not going to go over the same arguments many of us will have had or witnessed over the last week or so, suffice to say this is not the same as Arsenal, Wigan, Sunderland etc. We have not built a new stadium and we’re not going anywhere.

£10m therefore to wipe out history, £10m sees us disrespect those whos dying wish was to be scattered across its turf, would they have been as happy to say “I want me ashes scattered across the Donnay aisle of Sports Direct in Eldon Square son”? £10m to make those heritage stones irrelevant, respect by the way to those that were involved in reclaiming Harrys brick. Some have said doing so is disrespectful to those whos stones were nearby. I can see that argument however if another stone had been damaged then it could simply be replaced or fixed, these arent headstones in a graveyard. The removal of Harrys brick was a symbolic thing, its saying “I don’t care what happens to me, my dads good name is not being associated with this”

Most importantly though £10m to start erasing the history of our greats? Milburn, Gazza, Gallacher, Moncur, Keegan, Ginola, Cole and Shearer to name just a few. All scored in front of the Gallowgate within St James’ Park. Slowly but surely Ashley will erase the official records. If you dont believe me, do the following 2 google searches:

“sports direct” site:nufc.co.uk

“james park” site:nufc.co.uk

For the record I don’t believe a word of it, I don’t believe there are companies out there knocking on our door to take over the sponsorship, if there were then why would we need to “showcase the brand”? Call me cynical, call me a pessimist, in fact fuck it call me a cynical pessimistic bastard but I believe this name is here to stay. Ask yourself this, if you were Tesco, Nike, Franks Hardware would you not be asking Mike Ashley one simple question. “If this is such a good advertising chance, how come Sports Direct havent officially bought it and ensured they reap the rewards? Rather than letting a competitor do so”

Nope my view is that we will never tempt anyone to buy it, either the price will put them off or the club will turn them down with the statement “theyre not right for this club” thereby serving two purposes, first keeping the name for themselves and secondly, making the gullible fans among us believe that they actually have our best interests at heart “oh no, we werent going to sell the name to Morrisons, imagine it, a historic massive club like this one being linked with a cheap shop, oh no, not us, we’re holding on for the right brand to fit, in the meantime this charver discount store will showcase it”.

By lumping the upcoming shirt deal with the stadium name then they’ve tied that one upto Sports Direct as well. No doubt come January we’ll be announcing that nobody has come in for it so Mikes graciouslly allowed us to use the SD brand on the shirts. What a hero that man is.

Total pisstake.

SD is encroaching more and more on the business of NUFC and for no foreseeable gain to the football club, previous accounts have shown that we have actually paid SD for services yet at the same time more than 50% of our advertising space is taken up by the company (and I’m not even counting that monstrosity on the Gallowgate roof!)

Mike Ashley and co are slowly but surely taking our football club away from us, its rightful owners, we need to reclaim what is ours before he does irrepairable damage to the very fabric of the club. I cant stress this enough (and I’ll probably be slated for it but its true) if this afternoon Ashley announced that he was reverting the name back but in return was selling enough players to recoup £50m thenI’d cheer aloud. Relegation would be a worry but frankly Id take relegation and a couple of years in the Championship rather than lose something so dear to us.

For those of you that don’t agree with this view, those that say “Its still SJP to me” or “I’ll still call it SJP whats the problem?” then I ask you this, what is your break point? What will the man have to do to our club before you’ll flip as I (and many others) have done this last week.

Club name? What if we were to sell that? Sports Direct United? Ashleys Giants?
Colours? Would you roll over if he binned the stripes in favour of a nice red and blue number?

Maybe he’ll leave all those things as they are and simply remove all reference to anything pre-2007, rename the stands, Shearers, Harveys, etc after family members or brands hes associated with. “The Kappa suite”, “Donnay bar”, “tracky-bottom stand”. Heaven help anyone in the “wor Maureen corner”. As for my thoughts on Shearers and the Club shops, I’ll leave them to another post as no doubt I’ll ramble on for a while.

As a father of a young son, Ive dreamed from the day he was born of watching him step out and make his debut on the hallowed turf of St James’s. “George Whitfield made his Sports Direct Arena debut” doesnt really have the same ring to it.

As an addition, while were on the subject of history whats with the whole rewriting of our history and linking it to a clothing range? 1881? What does that have to do with Newcastle United? We were formed in 1892, 11 years after Newcastle East End were (technically Newcastle East end didn’t exist until October 1882, before that they were called Stanley Cricket Club or something equally unrelated), Newcastle United were formed in 1892, not 1881, not 1893 or 1992 (as some of our fans seem to think).

Creating a whole new piece of hitory that frankly doesnt exist and then launching a clothing range on the back of it is pure tackyness. The word United should give it away, the year we became that was 1892.

So in short Mr Ashley you can take your Arena and your fake formation year and shove both of them up your extremely rotund arse, actually hoy Derek up there with them n’all.