Victory for fan power over men of arrogance
by Frank Malley, Irish Examiner, Mar 20 1998
FOR nine long days they clung on brazenly through all the humiliation, like desperate men hanging from a cliff with their trousers around their ankles.
Then finally, and appropriately in the twilight hours, they fell - and the football world says good riddance to disgraced Douglas Hall and Freddy Shepherd.
Call it fan power, call it a victory for values, call it the money men protecting their investment as the share price tumbled. The main thing is they are gone and football has been reminded of a valuable truth — the fans care, the fans matter, the fans are all-important.
Shepherd and Hall may own 67% of the Newcastle's shares — but they don't own the club. They are merely the custodians of the traditions, the memories, the glories, the hopes and dreams of generations.
Ultimately the club is owned by the fans and they have far more power to make and break it than any egomaniac director. It has been all too easy in the money-mad world of the Premiership where players earn £30,000-a-week, directors cash in share options worth millions and fat cats feast on endless corporate junkets to forget where it all comes from.
Without the unswerving loyalty and blind passion of tens of thousands of people prepared every week to travel the length of the country to support their team football would die.
Without the fans there would be no lucrative TV deals — no-one would be interested in screening matches, however big, from sparsely populated stadiums with no atmosphere.
Without the fans there would be no merchandising or replica shirts or club memorabilia.
Without the fans there would be no cash through the turnstiles, though even with today's inflated ticket prices that is less crucial than it was.
But, most of all, without the fans the clubs would possess no heart.
The Newcastle heart this past week was kept beating by the members of the club's Independent Supporters' Association who within minutes of the first sleaze revelations had their fingers on the pulse of the club they love.
Men like John Regan, the association's secretary, a proud working-class Newcastle fanatic who can only afford to let his three children share his season ticket on a rotational basis.
To Regan the situation was as black and white as the team's shirts.
He was the first to demand resignations, the first to suggest Sir John Hall be restored to the helm, the first to urge fans not to protest at St James' Park but get behind the team and the first to sum up the mood of the whole of Tyneside. "They have shamed the club, shamed the area, they are not fit to run the club," he said.
Ironically, Regan's association was never recognised by Hall or Shepherd.
The arrogant directors refused to meet fans' officials, once intimating 'Why do we need you, we've got more supporters than we need.'
How ironic then that it was the association's views, the voice of the real fan spouted from almost every media outlet in the land, which sealed their fate.
The sex allegations, the drunken debauchery in Spanish brothels, made titillating reading. But that did not bring down Hall and Shepherd.
No, what really caught Hall and Shepherd in full frontal stupidity was their utter contempt for the hard-working, hard-playing people of the north-east.
Their insulting dismissal of Geordie women as "dogs" and their sneering contempt at ripping off parents with the sales of replica shirts went right to the core of the fans' disgust. You can insult some of the fans some of the time and get away with it.
Most clubs do, but you can't insult all the fans all of the time.
Nufcmismanagement view:
What more can be said that hasn't already been said about this?
Nothing that wouldn't get this site shutdown.
Words like disrespectful, disgraceful, arrogance, etc, they've all been used yet these thick skinned directors still have the cheek to return and try to tell others how they should conduct themselves while being on the pay-roll.
It would appear that it's a case of do what I say, not do as I do. I guess that could then bring in words like hypocrite.