What’s in a name? It depends on whom you ask. For Newcastle United supporters, there is nearly nothing more sacred than our beloved Magpies, hapless as they may be … and St. James’ Park is perhaps more holy a landmark than any cathedral on Tyneside.
Despised club owner Mike Ashley recently re-christened the park as “sportsdirect.com@St. James’ Park” … an ungainly, ludicrous name on its face, to say nothing of the ground’s sacrosanctity in Geordieland.
When the news first broke, I posted a few lines about it on Facebook. There, I am connected to a small community of Toon supporters and we share our disgust and adulation over most of the club’s happenings. But I left it at those few lines. I refused to write anything here. I refused even to comment on it further amongst friends.
Perhaps I thought if I ignored the announced change it would go away. It didn’t.
We are not strangers to adversity. Newcastle has not won a top-flight title since 1927. That’s 53 years before I was born. They have not won the FA Cup since 1955. Who cares that they won the Intertoto in 2006? It’s meaningless. But we don’t love them any less, we don’t support them any less, we don’t sing at a lower volume. We unwaveringly appreciate our club, despite decades of mismanagement and dashed promise.
Supporters really have no say in how their club is run except to withhold their money by not attending games and not buying merchandise … and that’s not the Geordie way. It isn’t that we don’t realize that our steadfast support allows our Chairmen to drive the club into the ditch with impunity, but what else can we do? Root for Sunderland? Come on…
So we can piss and moan and cry and complain that Fat Mike has sullied the good name of our football cathedral. We can wring our hands about how grave a wrong he has perpetrated and that some things are too holy to be whored out for advertising. And, as a whole, the Toon Army will. We are voicing our disgust and that will continue.
Famous Geordies have lent their voices to the outcry. The Police frontman Sting, members of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, and others have added their names to a petition started by the Newcastle United Supporters Trust.
While it’s always great to have the backing of big names known around the world, I’ve decided — this post excepted — to continue to ignore the change.
Like the Interboro Parkway between Brooklyn and Queens will continue to be the Interboro (nothing against the great Jackie Robinson), like Logan Avenue in Lansing, Michigan — like anything that was something else for far longer than whatever new name granted by some fatcat or politician — St. James’ Park is just that.
It always was and always will be.