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Sutton
United and SunBets
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13th
February 2017
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We can confirm that the club has reached an
agreement with SunBets for the company's name to appear on the front of our
shirts for next Monday's game against Arsenal. This was arranged with the
full knowledge and co-operation of our valuable first team shirt sponsors
Green Go Waste, to whom we are very grateful for allowing us to take
advantage of this one-off opportunity which will enable us to undertake
significant additional ground improvement works. This money will help so much
to keep improving this great club, and we're very excited to be working with
SunBets. They arranged for Ian Wright to take a fun training session today
and then arranged for the players to have a full tour of Wembley.
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Wayne
Shaw
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21st
February 2017
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Wayne Shaw has resigned from his role at Sutton
United following the events of last evening and subsequent publicity. He has
said that he 'fully understands the club's position regarding this matter.'
We are naturally disappointed that Wayne's time with us should end in
this manner, and would like to thank him for his contribution to the club and
wish him well for the future.
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There’s not
many people in the world I can call a fat bastard, but one of them is Wayne
Shaw. In case Andy Warhol’s prophecy is running slightly slow and we’re all
only famous for 15 seconds now, I’ll remind you Wayne Shaw is the 46 year old
former Sutton United reserve goalkeeper whose celebrity waxed in the run up to
the FA Cup fifth round tie at Gander Green Lane, reached its zenith when the
portly chap was pictured eating a pie in the dugout during the game and
plummeted to earth once the cat came out the bag that this was some scam
involving The Sun’s betting
operation. Total proof that Wayne’s world had waned came on the day after with
the news Shaw had agreed to a termination of his contract by Sutton because of
the potential contravention of FA rules caused by the flutter Wayne’s pals had
on him scoffing a meat and potato comestible on TV. All rather pathetic really;
naturally Piers Morgan leaped to Shaw’s defence. After all, it’s not as if
anyone had done anything really immoral, like hacking a murdered teenager’s
phone for instance…
On Saturday
18th February, the 4,308 who took in Wrexham v Aldershot in the National League
were part of the only non-league crowd higher than the 3,161 who broke the
ground record at Mariners Park as South Shields blasted Newport Pagnell Town
6-1 in the FA Vase quarter final, in a game which had resulted in Souths
postponing their trip to my team Newcastle Benfield. If ever there was evidence
of a team on the up, it is South Shields, whose chairman and benefactor Geoff Thompson
has ploughed a small fortune into his hometown club. Almost certainly, they
will be promoted from the Northern League.
As we didn’t
have a game that day, I took myself off to see Blyth Town hosting Alnwick in
Northern League Division 2. The home side won a less than compelling game 3-1,
in front of about 120 people I’d estimate. It’s a neat and tidy set up, with
room for expansion if needed. They had a bigger game on the Wednesday
following, breaking their attendance record against Blyth Spartans in the
semi-final of the Northumberland Senior Cup. They may have lost 5-2, but the
crowd of 400, who were charged £8 entry rather than the standard £6 (which
includes a free programme normally) made it a lucrative night, with the
catering and bar add-ons. That said, the decision to up their prices caused a
minor social media shit storm. I don’t agree with their decision, but I can
understand why. Being honest though, it is a bit of a shady thing to do. Then
again, the noises of potential extinction coming from Blyth’s divisional rivals
Hebburn Town prove that there isn’t an inexhaustible fund of cash, time or
goodwill to share around, so you can’t really condemn a club for making hay
while the sun shines. Can you? Well, yes
you can, if the source of income is of dubious moral provenance.
It’s almost
30 years since Matty Hanlon, master bricklayer by trade, popped in the winner
against Sillett’s Sky Blues, when the Match
of the Day cameras focussed not on a big bloke’s snack choice, but on
Hanlon’s sister wiping a tear of emotion away. Back to the present day and I’m
sure Wayne Shaw is actually the victim in all this; badly advised and
borderline exploited, resulting in him having to fall on his sword. Everything
that has subsequently come out about his character and devotion to the club
paints the picture of the archetypal hands-on club stalwart, who puts the fate
of their team ahead of personal advancement. It is rather a shame his club
sought to make him a convenient scapegoat for ill-advised publicity stunts
involving various tentacles of the News
International hydra.
Do not be
mistaken; Sutton United aren’t a struggling gaggle of part-time misfits,
staggering around, knee in clarts, stinking of booze and cigars in a glorified
pub league. In reality they’re a successful club from the affluent Surrey
stockbroker exurbs. They are doing well in the National League and reaping the
rewards of the astute business decision to lay a 4G pitch, which provides a
constant source of revenue all year round.
Let’s be honest; they don’t need Rupert Murdoch’s minions hanging round
the place to act as silent sponsors, living off the immoral earnings of a club who are doing well enough by
themselves. The fact is, we should
remember Sutton for the right reasons; specifically their giant killing acts
against Coventry in 89 and Leeds in round 4 this year. The only time I’ve ever
seen them was when they pulverised Gateshead 9-0 at the International Stadium
in 1990; curiously, they went down that year while Gateshead stayed up…
Having
reached the fifth round, courtesy of victories over Dartford, Cheltenham Town,
AFC Wimbledon and Leeds United, Sutton bowed out of this year’s competition,
after losing the BBC televised last 16 tie 2-0 to Arsenal. They may have gained
a considerable amount of prize money for their cup heroics, all well-deserved,
but in my eyes they’ve lost so much more in terms of self-respect and dignity
by getting rid of Shaw. With delicious irony, Sutton lost their first choice
keeper Ross Worner to injury in the very next game and didn’t have a substitute
to bring on, having dispensed with Shaw’s services. Of course he’s an
overweight bloke in his late 40s who wants to capitalise on his seemingly
bankable notoriety and I’d imagine he’ll be a Soccer AM fixture for a while, or even the face of Pukka Pies for a season or two, until he
drifts off into obscurity again, but any footballer or football fan giving The Sun their attention needs a severe
talking to. Every banknote News International peel from their
greasy wad of avaricious amorality is stained with the blood of the 96
innocents who died at Hillsborough; that will never change, so we must neither
forgive nor forget.
Money; it mightn’t
make you happy or morally sound, but it certainly keeps non-league teams in
business. Cash from almost anywhere, unlike a pie in the dugout, is not to be
scoffed at…
On Wednesday
22nd March, my club Newcastle Benfield played host to Sunderland RCA
in a Northern League Division One game. On an absolutely filthy, rainswept
night, when almost every other non-league fixture in the region was called off
because of waterlogged pitches; we destroyed an increasingly bedraggled
opposition 6-0, in front of 180 fans. Considering the game was free to enter,
on account of it being a rearranged fixture after the original was abandoned in
early January because of a frozen pitch (when the opposition were 1-0 up,
ironically enough), the crowd was particularly disappointing. This wasn’t just
because I was left with 40 unsold programmes, but because it curtailed our
attempts at raising funds for Ward 34 of the Freeman Hospital, where our
midfielder Kieran Wrightson had been successfully treated for cancer (he got
the okay a few days later that he was now completely cured, wonderfully enough),
over the past year. Kieran is a great player and a very popular lad, which is
why representatives of local clubs Dunston UTS, Team Northumbria, Whitley Bay,
West Allotment and especially his old side North Shields, with whom he won the
FA Vase in 2015, turned out to help us raise £3,000 on the night, partly though
a bucket collection on the gate and partly through a raffle. Newcastle United
had thoughtfully provided a signed shirt and Rafa Benitez took the time to give
Kieran a call to wish him well; all in all, it was a highly successful evening,
even allowing for the monsoon conditions. Every part of the event showed the
positive side to the beautiful game, albeit at our modest level.
At full
time, I headed into the clubhouse for a well-earned pint (courtesy of the
special array of bottled cask conditioned ale provided for the occasion by the
Newcastle University Non-League Football and Real Ale societies, who have
adopted our club and have donated a sizeable sum to Ward 34 themselves), just
as Lukas Podolski fired in his spectacular winner for Germany against England.
As the commentary was drowned out by the sound of the assembled throng chewing
the fact about matters of mutual interest, there was no appreciable reaction to
the goal. When I got back home, I didn’t watch the highlights; having been out
at graft then football, I caught up on events that had unfolded following the
attack by Khalid Masoud / Adrian Elms on the House of Commons, with a growing
sense of alarm, sadness and despair at the conditions in our society that
provoked such an incident.
Whether this
seeming suicide by cop of an apparently solo deranged murderer will be linked
to the discovery of a hitherto undiscovered many-headed terrorist hydra, I have
no idea. All I know, as a 52 year old English teacher, is that 4 innocent
people were killed by a 52 year old English teacher from Kent, hell-bent on
spreading hatred and division in a society that has already suffered cultural
fissures from the hatred and division inspired by Nigel Farage, another 52 year
old from Kent. I also know, at an instinctive, elemental level that singing Ten German Bombers is a fucking moronic
thing to do at any football game, never mind at an international on the same
day as the horrific incident at Westminster. To discover that the same song,
together with repeated airings of Harry
Roberts is our friend were part of the disgraceful scenes that marred
Shildon’s 2-0 win over North Shields on Saturday March 25th, is
nothing short of alarming. Partly this is because the idea of fighting on the
unsegregated terraces of Northern League grounds is anathema to all but the
lunatic fringe who’ve no business associating themselves with the grassroots
game and partly because it seems a less than respectful way to remember the
fallen PC Keith Palmer by chanting about a police killer from the 1960s.
Prior to
events (plural) involving the pugilists at Dean Street, the only recorded
incident of crowd trouble at a Northern League game I’m aware of, was the
bizarre situation at Esh Winning against Penrith in April 2001, when referee
Russell Tiffin, a farmer, left the field in tears after a certain Thomas Marron
bellowed “I hope your animals get foot and mouth,” in the middle of said
crisis. The perpetrator was bound over by Durham magistrates for the sum of £50
and banned from all football grounds for 3 and a half years. From 16 years
distant, the story appears scarcely credible; did such a comment really merit
such a punitive, heavy handed, official response?
Marron’s nasty
little comment certainly paled into insignificance as an example of personally
offensive, targeted abuse compared to what Greg Downs suffered at St James’
Park on January 2nd 1987. During a particularly dismal 2-1 home
reverse to Coventry City, the one memory that stands out for me is of the
completely bald fullback coming to take a throw in front of the Gallowgate
corner and a particularly vindictive, intoxicated terrace wag bellowing “look
at that twat; he’s got fucking leukaemia,” to a ripple of embarrassed laughter
and the utter bemusement of the player himself, who quizzically stared at the
perpetrator before turning to throw the ball in. A decade and a half before the incident at
Esh Winning, football grounds were different places and the police on duty way
back then certainly had no interest in wading into the crowd to arrest the
bloke. I’m certainly not adopting a sticks and stones standpoint, because words
can wound, whether written or spoken and certainly the effect on the victim of
mass offensive chanting can be deeply upsetting, in the same way as a
co-ordinated campaign by Twitter trolls gets under the skin of anyone on the
receiving end of a bully’s wrath. What I do suggest is that responses to abuse
and abusive comments should be proportionate. The Coventry incident was one
bloke out of 30,000, while the Esh Winning carry-on was one bloke out of 30,
though both were clearly audible and both intend to offend and upset the targets
of the comments.
Spring
forward another decade and a half to the present day and the match day football
experience is completely unrecognisable from 30 years ago. Esh Winning,
resolutely anchored to the foot of Northern League Division Two, may still be
watched by the same 30 blokes, or their sons and grandsons, who were there when
referee Tiffin abandoned the game, but there are other Northern League clubs,
like Ashington or Heaton Stannington, who have supporter groups that have more
in common with Stratford, Lewes or Dulwich Hamlet than Millwall. More
crucially, the 50,000 at St James Park are changed utterly from the demographic
who endured the Coventry defeat.
Newcastle is
a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic city and football club. The transformative bourgeoisification
of the city is so complete that it has more in common with Bristol, North
London or Brighton than neighbouring, north eastern towns; is it any wonder the
population voted to remain in the EU at the last referendum? The football club
and crowd have mirrored the city as a whole and similarly changed. While there
is still much work to be done to fully celebrate the LBGT section of the
support, elsewhere the inclusive and all-embracing nature of the club’s
following must be recognised. Not only has the most successful and generous
Food Bank at any club in the country been established organically by supporters,
but the stands are enlivened by an ever diversifying ethnic make-up. Who would
have thought that 30 years ago, we’d see groups of young Geordie Muslim women
in full hijabs, rubbing shoulders with middle aged Geordie blokes, without a
hint of suspicion or enmity on either side. This is no longer the place for the
kind of vile racist chanting that Noel Blake said made Newcastle the most
hostile place to visit as a black player. The people in these stands would not
dream of singing a racist or any kind of offensive song; self-policing means it
would not be tolerated.
If the
entire attendance of SJP knows what is
right from wrong, as well as the overwhelming majority of non-league fans, why
can’t the embarrassing element of knuckleheaded England fans who insist on
singing about a conflict that ended over 70 years ago or an organisation who
renounced violence a quarter of a century ago, just grow up? Easy question to
ask; hard one to answer, sadly…
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