GROUNDSHARE HOCUS POCUS
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

“Freud’s theory was that when a joke opens a window and all those bats and bogeymen fly out,
you get a marvellous feeling of relief and elation.

The trouble with Freud is that he never had to play the old Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night
after Rangers and Celtic had both lost.”
KEN DODD – Quoted in The Guardian, 30th April 1991.

Frequently I find it difficult to take the game of football seriously. There are far too many pompous unhumoured megasplats attached to it who require a sound thrashing with a cat o’ nine tails manufactured from a suitable array of barbed tips. As we all know, the media is full of these freeloading birdbrains. Football is a GAME and a HOBBY, period. Take it beyond those parameters and you are in dangerous and uncertain territory.

But there are times when it is necessary to approach a related issue with a good deal more than a quick twist of some wind-up elastic skit bands. The groundshare issue, recently revived, is one of them. The main reason is that it goes way beyond mere football-as-a-game. It really does enter the area of socio-economics, such is the parlous state of our city’s wellbeing. The issue cannot be dismissed on the usual grounds of absurd football chauvinism. Therefore I will abandon my usual knockabout style in favour of some relative gravitas.

So let me say straightaway I am wholeheartedly in favour of the idea in principle – subject to protection of the interests of Everton Football Club and its fans. Conversely, if the fans voted against it in a democratic ballot then the move should not take place. If the latter happens then the pinkies proposed stadium on part of Stanley Park MUST GO AHEAD FOR THE SAKE OF THE CITY. We badly need an iconic architectural project of European stature. Anybody paying even partial attention to our city’s recent (strictly relative) regeneration will know much of it is superficial, and even what there is hangs by a long-term thread. There are tremendous opportunities for redevelopment but there is no real sign the private sector has the least intention of taking them up in any truly worthwhile manner. Thus, a stadium for either of our football clubs, or a shared stadium, becomes of crucial importance. It could be as much a catalyst as the sports developments in lake side Cleveland in the USA.

In fact I have been in favour of a shared stadium for many years, ever since it became obvious (in the midsixties) the city’s population was going to reduce drastically. Planning proposals made this a certainty even before the socio-economic catastrophes of the late seventies and throughout the eighties and most of the nineties. When the two events combined our city almost fell off the edge of the earth. This has made matters much more imperative. We are not in a position to pick and choose. Would that we were. Therefore it is vital our city deals sensibly with what assets we have. Football is one of them.

It is ludicrous that a city with a population of about 450,000 should accept without question the proposal to have two stadia of 60,000 capacity each. The notion defies common sense and flies in the face of good financial housekeeping. This isn’t to say it wouldn’t work – Cleveland has THREE new stadia – but in a poor city like ours we have to husband our resources like misers. If that entails the two clubs sharing a stadium, then so be it. With football now facing a long term melt down it is time for both sets of fans to face reality and social responsibility. The current tranche of EEC Objective One money really IS our last chance to obtain major incoming investment. Recent private sector activity has only increased on the back of it. Once it has gone we will never get a similar opportunity due to the proposed increase in the number of EEC countries. There is no guarantee the private sector will proceed with the so-called Fourth Grace or the Bluecoat Triangle project. Right now everything is in the balance.

Naturally, fans are concerned about maintaining a separate identity in a shared stadium. This is as it should be. The concerns should be seriously addressed. But they are far from insoluble and the solutions are not rocket science. It simply requires the application of administrative talents and good will. Shared stadia in Europe present no problems at all. Nobody should be too proud to look at the examples set in Milan and Rome, where identities and rivalry are far more intense than Merseyside. In fact I was first motivated in the idea when I visited the original San Siro stadium as a boy. Since then I have been involved in design of various sports facilities and have taken part in several study tours. This merely reinforced my instincts. Issues such as seat colours and location of administrative facilities are such a puny argument they cannot be allowed to stand in the way of a serious shared stadium proposal. There’s far too much at stake.

For Everton Football Club there is no real alternative to a new stadium. Without one we cannot hope to regenerate our club to the level we claim to seek. If not now, when? And what does that do to our long term future? Do we REALLY want to suppurate slowly while gazing fondly at the quill-pen-and-parchment-paper pince-nez mindset of Goodison Park ownership? Talk of ONLY concentrating on team building is nonsense. Where is the money to come from without a long run In Europe? Higher entrance fees is a suicidal step in a catchment area with serious unemployment and low pay problems. The fact is we need a twin track approach and we need to pursue it with single-minded determinism. A shared stadium offers us a relative short cut. Furthermore, a joint approach would make it easier to raise the necessary finance through the economies of scale. And I need hardly say money for a property development, especially one of this nature, is a good deal easier to raise than money for absurdly inflated transfer fees.

I have no particular preference for the site so long as it is a good one. If pushed I would of course support the Kings Dock site and the basic stadium concept thereto but that is no longer going to happen because of recent land sales proposals by English Partnerships, not unless they change their minds. No area of the city has any right to claim preference over another. Where the city is concerned the most important thing is that a shared stadium helps bring us the kind of sporting status we want. Vested political or personal interests should not be allowed to enter into it, though of course they will, as we found out at Kings Dock. But we can identify those relatively easily and expose them accordingly if needs must.

At this stage my guess is the idea is unlikely to develop from here. In previous knockabout essays I have identified the main problem as what I call The Melledrew Tendency. There won’t be many who don’t understand the derisive implication – if the cap fits, please wear it. However there is a reasonably serious point to be made with the term. It is this:

There is a fearful defect running right through contemporary English culture. It is a mindset of incapable box tickers and form fillers. Not necessarily, as some might think, in local, national or European government. To be sure these are still in place, but they are virtually overwhelmed by the recent evolution of a corporate branch of the species. These exist not only in private financial institutions but also in a whole swathe of privatised quangos and self-styled “independent” agencies and companies similar to the kind of claptrap developed in the United States. This has given rise to a different type of bureaucratic mindset which now besets whole professions in a pantomime of useless “presentations,” “applications” and counterfeit “tenders.” For “tenders” read: cheapest and tackiest. We have a Spiv Culture and it has filtered down into areas of working class life I previously thought impregnable. There isn’t an area of English life untouched by this lunacy including local and national political leadership. In the end it produces the kind of stalemate typified by trench warfare in the First World War. In a city such as ours stalemate = total inactivity + blame culture. The results can be devastating.

For this reason, plus ridiculous and laughable football chauvinism, I think it unlikely a shared stadium will go ahead. But I hope it does.

In the meantime our city has fallen decisively behind Manchester in sports stadia and facilities. If enough people of leadership, talent, good will and determination are not found then there is only one logical conclusion.

The clock is ticking. (19/09/03)

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