View From the South Stand

I’ll be honest, View From the South Stand wasn’t my first choice name. In fact I was feeling very clever, and more than a little bit pleased with myself, at having come up with ‘The Red Bull-etin’. It’s nice and snappy, succinctly combining the team name and the purpose of the blog and I was very ready to file for the domain name until my final round of due diligence threw up one small issue. Red Bull themselves had already cottoned on to that idea for their own magazine, beating me to the punch by a casual twenty years. View From the South Stand it will have to be then, for at least as long as the terrace keeps that title.

Which brings me on to something I felt like writing about. I intend to throw a few of these bonus episodes in throughout the season to get out my thoughts on things that aren’t necessarily rugby related, or that don’t quite fit in the usual pre and post-match posts. And the subject for this first ramble is the naming of sports grounds.

Look I did say it might be off topic.

Sports grounds, but particularly ours, and actually the naming of stands as well. Starting with our place then, and I’ve got to say a concern for me following recent developments was that we were going to lose the Kingston Park name. It’s not the best or most historic name, but it is ours, has been in place since the stadium went up in the 90’s and serves to tie the club and the local area together quite nicely. My big concern for the summer was that it would be getting re-christened as “The Red Bull Arena” or something equally naff that would only serve to erase any sort of place or local connection.

As a quick sidebar, I am actually more glad we escaped the worst possible punishment that would have been the dreaded ‘double-barrelling’ as The Red Bull Arena at Kingston Park or something similar, looking at you Mattioli Woods and DPD. Not sure where the fear of that particular naming atrocity comes from, possibly delayed action fallout from the whole “Sports Direct Arena @ St James’ Park” debacle.

Anyway, we get to keep KP; which, for those unaware, is named for the particular area of Newcastle in which it sits. While it doesn’t have the heft of somewhere like The Rec or Kingsholm it is known and Kingston Park is part of the regular vernacular for people discussing the top flight. One thing I will take issue with is the stand names.

This rugby club has existed, in one form or another, for nearly 150 years. From all that time, could we not have found even one former club member to name a stand after. Much as I would love to pin this on a noble ‘no one member is bigger than the club’ mentality, I suspect a lack of creativity is probably a bigger contributor to the four stands at KP simply being named for the four compass points. The South Stand I will give a pass to as that name now carries a bit of a reputation with it and has in the past flirted with sponsorship naming.

The rest of you though, chronically uninteresting. So I have come up with some changes. Starting with the East Stand, this for me has a nice easy change ‘The Old Clubhouse Stand’ which neatly sums up both what it very visibly is, and it’s role in the clubs history. The West Stand is a bit of a modern monolith and for me, ripe for honouring a former player to give it some character. Bit of a toss up in this as there’s any number of very worthy former club members, I’m sure ‘The Jonny Wilkinson Stand’ would be very appealing to any visiting fans, but for me it feels a good opportunity to honour Doddie. Stick some tartan paint up and ‘The Doddie Weir Stand’ suddenly has a bucket more character.

Which brings us to the ugly duckling, although the current rumour is ‘The North Stand’ is in for a big renovation/expansion so I’m willing to wait and see it become the swan. But for now, is it really an honour to have a glorified set of concrete steps named after you? Not really, so I propose ‘The Community Stand’. It’s still bland, but at least it’s name after us now. Plus the outreach and foundation aspects have always been a major string to the club’s bow.

It wouldn’t be my first act as chairman, but you’ll know if I ever come to power because it would be out with ‘North’, ‘East’, ‘West’ and ‘South’; and in with ‘Community’, ‘Old Clubhouse’, ‘Doddie Weir’ and ‘South’.