Looney Toons crack me up

Will Batchelor

• Last Updated: November 09. 2009 9:55PM UAE / November 9. 2009 5:55PM GMT

The hastily scrawled banner at St James’ Park – sorry, I mean at the sportsdirect.com @ St James’ Park Stadium – gave me a good laugh.

“Saint Robson, Saint Shearer, Saint James’ Park,” it proclaimed proudly, though sadly inaccurately on all three counts.

Bless their little polyester socks (three pairs for £1.49 from sportsdirect.com). They may be slumming it in the second tier of English football, but Geordies are still unbeatable when it comes to self-righteous indignation.

Only a Toon fan would combine a name-change protest with the unofficial canonising of Sir Bobby Robson and Alan Shearer. Newcastle won fewer than half their games under Robson, and were relegated under Shearer. If that makes them sainthood material, what honour would they demand for someone who actually won them something? Immortality?

Mike Ashley, the Newcastle owner, must have known that his decision to re-name the stadium would prompt a negative response. But he also knows he could not be any less popular with the fans, so he may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb – and enjoy the avalanche of publicity for his company.

But why are British football fans so quick to condemn a practice which is routine around the world? What difference does the name of a building make to the enjoyment of the spectacle within?

Would Cleveland Cavaliers fans have enjoyed their recent success more if their home was still called the Gund, instead of the Quicken Loans Arena? Did American football team the San Francisco 49ers manage to recapture their winning ways last season because Candlestick Park got its old name back?

British football fans will generally retort with a one-word answer: History. In an era dominated by The Big Four, this is understandable. Most fans know we will never see our clubs win anything meaningful, so we cling to the fact that our grandfathers did. Lose the stadium name and those previous glories become even more distant.

But here is another word: maths. Football is an expensive business, and rich clubs enjoy more success than poor ones.

If selling a name means we can buy better players to score more goals, then I say do it. And if that means selling it to a global sneaker firm, then I say Just Do It. If football fans are terrified of losing their identity because somebody changes a sign on a building, then their identity must have been pretty shaky to start with.

The good news for Toon fans is the name is only a temporary one to advertise the fact the naming right are up for grabs.

Not all commercially-named stadia sound so awful. Stoke’s Britannia Stadium, for example, has a patriotic ring to it. Milwaukee’s Miller Park has a certain old school charm. And Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena sounds a formidable fortress.

Knowing Newcastle’s luck, however, they will end up with something terrible like Dick’s Sporting Goods Park (Colorado), the Big Sandy Superstore Arena (West Virginia) or, my favourite, the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre (Victoria, Canada). Whatever they end up with, we can be sure of more tears before bedtime from the Geordies, so maybe they should follow the example of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles baseball team, who play at the Kleenex Stadium in Sendai, Japan.

Kleenex @ St James’ Park. Sounds very fitting to me.

Owen does not live the young man’s dream any more

I felt a peculiar sensation when Michael Owen was not named in the England squad to play Brazil in Qatar this weekend – a decision which effectively signals the end of his international career. The sensation felt dark and melancholic. It felt a lot like...sadness. But why would I feel sad for a man whose career has been a merciless pursuit of his own agenda?

This is the same Michael Owen who effectively forced Liverpool, the club which made him a star, into selling him for a paltry £8 million (Dh49.2m). The same Michael Owen who joined Real Madrid despite surely knowing he would not get a regular start. The same Michael Owen whoallowed Newcastle to spend £17m on him but did not deign to live there, choosing instead to commute by helicopter from Wales. Even this summer, Owen could have shown some guts by joining a battling club – Everton, Stoke and Hull were all showing interest – where his talents could have made a genuine difference.

Instead he took the easy route as a bench-warmer and bit-part player with Manchester United. So why the sadness at his international demise? Probably because I remember that goal against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, and how it felt at the time. Owen had the looks, the charm, the smile, but most importantly he had the talent.

He was living every young man’s dream, including mine. But as the years passed, the smile disappeared and the charm wasreplaced by a dour professionalism. He made living the dream look like hard, mercenary work. Though I still love sport, I no longer invest my emotions into sportsmen.

Time has hardened me, too. The snuffing out of Owen’s World Cup dreams serve as a reminder of my own lost innocence. Told you I was feeling sad.

sports@thenational.ae

Will Batchelor is a writer, broadcaster and self-confessed cynical sports fan