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Newcastle United Football Club owner Mike Ashley is doing his damndest to secure his place as the pantomime villain in the city’s Theatre Royal production of Cinderella this year.
His on, off, on sale of the club is off again. And now his latest idea to raise cash is to flog off the naming rights to St James’ Park.
Newcastle fans are rightly pissed off. It’s a state of affairs that is rapidly becoming business as usual. Ashley’s mismanagement of the club and its relationship with supporters is well documented.
It’s not possible to live in or around Newcastle and not take an interest football. St James’ Park is at the very heart of city both physically and emotionally.
This is a Championship Club that regularly has a home gate of more than 40,000. That’s more people than attend most Premiership games. More importantly by my reckoning it’s close to £1 million revenue for the club.
The solution is simple. Fans need to hit Ashley where it hurts and start boycotting home games. It could be a superb campaigning issue for local media that would guarantee the attention of readers and provide an outlet for the fury of fans.
But so far both The Journal and The Evening Chronicle remain mute. I’ve even baited the Supporters Trust via Twitter but to no end.
And so the farce at St James’ Park – or whatever the stadium ends up being called – will almost certainly continue. As the father and son writing duo Mike and Tom Chaplin documented in their play at the end of last season – You Couldn’t Make It Up.
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Wadds, lots of my friends are avid Geordie fans and you really couldn’t make it up. I went to see them at St James’ park a couple of times last year. Mike Ashley seems determined to ruin the club. He doesn’t care about the fans (hence the lying officially in the papers) and he doesn’t care about the team. To be honest I have been suprised at how well they have started the season following the amount of first teamers that left. I just hope they get back into the Premier League and someone buys it off Ashley so he can get back in the shadows again otherwise this pantomine will run and run at a club which deserves better.
As a season ticket holder of 16 years I feel pretty qualified to comment on this topic. There are two key problems with non attendance. Firstly it wouldn’t hit as hard as you think financially. A large proportion of the gate is season ticket holders like myself and they already have our money in the bank so the only people losing would be us not getting what we paid for. Secondly is the emotional one. The situation is a bit like your best friend going out with someone who you really don’t like and think is very bad for them. Do you say you will stop going to the pub with them until they break up or do you bite your tongue and continue to support them even though you know it isn’t good for them and will all end in tears?!
The bottom line is the supporters suffer if the football club suffers so this sort of action is a bit of a case of shooting yourself in the foot. We are stuck with him for better or, more likely, worse.