COLUMNIST KEVIN SPARKE
I'd vote 'no'... if I could
By
Kevin Sparke : 27/07/2007 :
Comments (24) :
First, let me introduce myself. I lived in Knowsley for 40 years (Huyton and then Whiston) and was a regular attendee at Goodison Park for 25 of those 40 years. I now live in the North East and apart from Newcastle, Middleborough and Sunderland games I don?t travel to away games; in fact, I hardly visit Goodison now, as normally I work Saturdays, and in any case, I?m not sure I?d travel 300 miles every other week for the sort of footballing fare we?ve been served over the last 10 years, even if I was chauffer-driven in a stretch limo with a fully stocked bar.
Despite my non-attendance at most home games, I still call myself an Everton supporter. I watch 80% of Everton?s games live through the internet; pour over the papers/websites for Everton news; write a bit of stuff relating to the Everton cause. During my 25+ years as a Goodison attendee I hardly ever missed a game (home or away) and I?ve lost at least one job through putting Everton Football Club before my career.
I?m against the Kirkby option and if I had a vote (which I haven?t) I?d be voting against; here?s why:
Marginalisation
Marginalise - to take or keep somebody or something away from the centre of attention, influence, or power.
I feel that by moving those four insignificant miles across the Liverpool/Knowsley border we are in effect marginalising ourselves.
I am aware that geographical boundaries change with time and the whim of politicians and that they have done so in the past and will do so again. However, Liverpool the city exists as at least three separate things ? a geographical boundary, a political entity, and as a thought-construct.
Ask 100 southerners for three defining characteristics of the City of Liverpool and my guess is (after the derogatory stereotypes) Liverpool Football club would appear on that list - Everton wouldn?t, simply because our name is not eponymous; Everton FC are not immediately seen by many people as a club associated with the City of Liverpool. We lost that battle when we didn?t change our name to ?Liverpool United? back in the 1890s.
Why does this matter? In pure football terms it simply doesn?t; we have our own identity forged in our history and the common experience of supporting the club. It does matter when attracting sources of revenue from outside our regular fanbase. Liverpool FC will benefit enormously from Everton FC?s decision to cede these sources of potential revenue to them with our inexplicable willingness to remove ourselves from the hub of economic activity within the area ? the city centre.
Believe me, the City of Liverpool?s tourist industry will proudly proclaim one ?World class? football team residing within its borders; one cultural draw to rank alongside The Beatles and the Albert Dock as being part of the authentic ?Liverpool? experience. Everton have long been an embarrassing footnote mentioned in whispered breath by those who hold the cultural capital.
I?m loath to talk much about Liverpool FC but we simply don?t fit the touristy stereotype of kopite ?Scouse? togetherness, scarves and flags held high as we never walk alone together to mawkish sentimentality summed up in that awful dirge. Their?s is the revenue-generating trophy touristy plastic face of football ? we?re reality. Tourists don?t dig reality.
Kings Dock might have challenged this ? we might have bust wide open Liverpool FC?s cultural dominance bordering upon hegemony. Nope, we?re going to whimper away like the whipped dogs we?ve become and move to the outskirts of town and to the border of people?s imagination, out of sight, out of mind? out of touch.
We need a ?Kings Dock? like presence in the city or suffer the inevitable consequences of marginalisation ? anonymity, neglect and ultimately we will cease to be relevant.
Identity
Our identity as Everton supporters is constructed as much by what we are against as what we are for. Everton football club can rely on between 30,000 and 40,000 people with a similar identity turning up every other week for Premier league games. There has been a worrying trend over the last decade for that average attendance to be significantly down for cup matches. I believe this reflects how these competitions have been devalued in the supporter?s minds. Ten more years of mediocrity and will that 35, 000 die hard fan base shrink to 25,000? It has happened before you know.
Being a football fan is all about creating and sustaining an identity. I became an Everton supporter because my dad was an Everton supporter, not because Everton represented my home town. However, given the very real likelihood of the financial gulf between Liverpool FC and Everton FC becoming even wider ? which kid wants to follow a team that not only doesn?t win trophies, is not likely to ever win trophies ever again?
If I was 10 years old again and getting the piss taken out of me by the LFC majority in my class, who as well as reminding me that they?ve won x amount of European Cups, have elite players we can?t afford playing for them, are on the TV every week playing the top sides in Europe whilst we are on every ?Pancake Friday? ? telling me that my side does not even play in Liverpool therefore I?m not an authentic Scouser for supporting them just might swing it for me.
Logistics
Simple this one ? Can the Kirkby site cope with the much increased traffic volume every other Saturday? I?m not sure it can.
Trust
Given the cock-ups, misrepresentations and downright lies that certain members of the Everton managerial hierarchy have been a party to over the last 5 years, I?m not sure that I trust these jokers with the future of Everton FC.
I?m also deeply suspicious of their decision to put things to a mandate to certain supporters. I?ve got my own theory relating to why they?ve done this and it is along the lines of diffusion of responsibility. Of the ?Well, you voted for/against it lads? kind.
To sum up
If I had a vote I?d be voting ?No? to Kirkby. I don?t go along with some of the more hysterical posters and deem that people who don?t agree with me are ?traitors? ?idiots? or even worse ?kopites?, but I would ask you to think carefully about this and vote with your eyes wide open.
Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer
I completely agree with you Kevin. I can vote as a season ticket holder and you have summarised a lot of points I fear that I would be unable to articulate despite being halfway through an English degree.
People may think it’s pathetic and bitter to constantly compare ourselves to Liverpool FC but this is how most of us live every single day, taking abuse from and even occasionally enjoying friendly discussion with kopites. The identity of Everton is so important and Everton is a football club from the city of Liverpool. Of course I don’t want us to be left behind and realise we may have to move, and call me what you will, but we must retain our identity and remain in the city of Liverpool. There must be ways for this to happen, Bill and Keith just need to work harder.
So it’s all about marginalisation and identity is it? Absolute rubbish. Are any of the current Evertonians going to change allegiance because of a move to Kirkby. No. We are blue ’till we die. Are our kids going to brought up Evertonians? Of course - as long as we take them to the match!
Identity? At Kirkby we will be a scouse club, based in a scouse area, owned by a scouser, who allows supporters (mainly scouse) to vote on important issues. We will have little debt and therefore our destiny will be in scouse hands. How much more identity do you want? I suppose we could increase the spending in the newly improved academy to have more scousers in the team.
Compare this to LFC. Owned by Americans, in huge debt and no vote for their disenfranchised multi-national fans. Speaking of franchises, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that if football does go truly global, Liverpool would be one of the first to disappear off to the States. They’ll be a tad more than half a mile over the city boundary then.
I’m trying to illustrate that EFC is in our hearts, not in artificial boundaries, media perception or pathetic LFC taunts. Focus on the financial survival of the club so we can compete and rub those red noses in the dirt every time we win. If we are above them in the table we have nothing to fear! We have everything to celebrate.
well said vin, as much as it will hurt me to leave Goodison, i think we have to go, from what we are lead to believe it makes great business sence, but thats the problem for me havin complete faith in the board which if im honest i cant say that is 100%, all i can say is that it would break my heart making my way to the ground (we are in walking distance)and seeing the reds stadium (although looking like theme park/bus terminal)and comparing it to Goodison, we would be a laughing stock, our great club, i couldnt bear it. I just pray that the kirby move will be a success, when you examine the details we have been given, i hope the fact that the retail park that is to be developed around the stadium allows the club to generate more revenue as the stadium will be accessable at all times i for one will take the kids regularly on a tour while mrs does shoppin. maybe a cinema or casino etc may be incorporated within stadium again to generate cash. somebody on this site had a great idea that i hope the club could addopt, a bus setup from goodison direct to kirkby stadium, i know loads of fans that would take up this option even if they had to pay a couple of quid for it, imagine the banter on the way to the game, be like the coach to an away trip. ultimatley i have to ask myself who do i put my faith in WB @ LCC or BK? Neither 100%, but things that WB has said in the press since Kirkby went exclusive just stink of spin and goin through the motions to me, and LCC we know have always favoured the club that bears the city name, even down to a bloody LFC bus,that really gets to me when see it. i know that BK & KW are puttin alot of spin on things too but listening to KW on radio city he came across as genuine, i may be neive, but thats the feeling i got, but the biggest pull for me is that Knowsley Council appear to be doin as much as they possibly can to make this work, they appear to want us LCC seem to just want to put up with us, as we will always be the 2nd team in their eyes. lets go to kirkby, i dont come to this decision lightly i have agonised over this in fact i had a row with my brother as he was concerned that the fanbase in 10 years would be eradicated, nobody knows the answer to this but all i could do was ask him why he supported the blues, why his 3 brothers supported the blues why his dad, his brothers, his dad and so on then i asked him where his dad grew up, he replied Kirkby!(myself untill very recently and my 3 brothers have spend all our lives in anfield)
Some excellent points Kevin, especially concerning the vote being an attempt to diffuse responsibility. With the information the fans have been given, the vote can be nothing else and is probably a reaction to the fuss made by the fans when the King’s Dock went tits up.
Vin Bleu, I understand what you are saying and perhaps for die-hard Evertonians there will be no change, but I do not think that the rest of the world will view it that way - I think that EFC will become marginalised. There are a lot more non Evertonians than Evertonians who can perpetuate that viewpoint and at the end of the day it is how others view and report on EFC which creates the image of EFC not the current set of fans.
rupert, success creates the image of EFC
Bluenose - sure, but only part of it. If you win a cup or a league then fine - but what about the image of those clubs that don’t?
How many football fans in the UK have heard of W. Dean? How many of them feel about Everton the way you do? How many of them see Everton as the ’small’ club on Merseyside?
think i might be missing your point here rupert, who cares what other fans think, i dont care about their clubs along with i hope many blues, all i care about is the blues, but if people were to look at our situation, new training ground good manager (even though i am puzzled by him at times other club fans see him as a good manager as i come into contact with many clubs fanbase through work)young promising team, with home grown players comin through, and now a possible new stadium. now your comment of a maybe winning a cup or a league, if only........
Kevin you are my new hero.You hit the nail right on the head. Kirkby as you and I know is a disaster waiting to happen.I only wish others would wake up to this fact and put aside the ridicoulos notion that going to Knowsley will save us financially.
What twat thought that one up.
I am a season ticket holder, and have been with my 15 and 18 year old lads for years, and well before they were born - I am still undecided on the vote and pore over the debates on TW, and I still cant decide. My lads are asking me the way to vote, for information and for my views - they will take their lead from me - so in effect I have 3 votes and have to get it right . There will be many others in this position right now - so this website is invaluable to us.
Just one point struck me about comments made concerning the perception of other fans, in Liverpool, in the Uk and globally - we should ignore this and just concentrate on what is correct for us and for future blues fans.
In my job I travel a lot into Italy, Germany and the US - I am often asked where I live and when I say Liverpool, without fail they assume I support the RS, until I point out that I am an Evertonian. Even then, most of them dont even know much about Everton, and certainly not its location, Liverpool, Walton, Kirkby the North West or anywhere else for that matter!
The bottom line is we dont have a global brand anyway, and we need to focus on our issues, and not what others think - we need to be parochial and selfish in this decision.
Toffeeweb - Thanks for the education, opportunity for freedom of speech and excellent debate without spin - whatever we decide as a group of supporters, we must accept the decision and outcome, stick with the blues and continue to keep the faith.
Great stuff Kevin but I do fear that we are fighting lost cause
i am in same boat steve my family have a total of 5 votes, but we are still undecided,we all agree that we have to move although we are thinkin of a yes vote, the Bestway option has now put a spanner in the works, but agin due to limited info is this just LCC spin and would it offer full 7 days a week revenue possibilities? who knows, plus there is the traffic congestion issues that at first appear to be far worse than those expected of kirkby.
Tony... you can’t KNOW how the future will be if we move to Kirkby. You can suspect, you can imagine, you can have strong feelings towards one side or another.. BUT you can’t know. Noone can.
I’m for the move since LCC have had years to give us other locations in the city... and clearly thinks we are a poor second to Pool.
If we move to Kirkby we get a brandnew stadium for a ridiculously low amount of cash. I saw somewhere that we’ll have the option to lease it for 199 years or something like that. But noone says we have to stay there for 199 years. Say 30 years from now, when Kevin said the "poor" 10-year old will be in school, if we feel then that it has been a bad move and we’ve somehow lost the hugefan-base (which I don’t think we’ll do)... what’s saying we won’t be able to move back into the city then?
Alot can happen in 30 years. Liverpool FC might be moved to another city altogether (like Wimbledon did a few years ago).
Their owners might drop out and leave the club heavily in debt.
All scenarios are just as likely as a 10 year old getting bullied in school for he supports a team that is located a few feet on the opposite side of a line on a map... and what’s to say that that line hasn’t moved during these 30 years?
Pete what is it with you lets blame the council lot.The council as I have said in the past are probably sick to death of Kenwrights antics by now.
The Kings Dock was signed sealed and delivered with the help of the council and Kenwright fucked it up.Everyone was strung along for years untill finally the shithouse admitted he could not meet his end of the deal.
The Kings Dock was the finest site on earth on which to base a football club and KENWRIGHT not the council let us all down.FFS wake up.
Now resident abroad, but having formerly been resident until relatively recently in Croxteth Park for a time, I’m an overseas blue familiar with the locations of both Goodison and the proposed new stadium. Since Kirkby is very near Croxteth and I believe only a few hundred hundred metres over the notional inner city boundary it seems a potentially trivial issue. Especially since the boundary is under review and likely to be replaced altogether by the Greater Liverpool boundary, within which Kirkby will fall. Confirmation of this would be nice though. On a related matter, I’d rather we retain Evertonian ownership rather than selling out to self interested foreigners with spurious long term intentions. Since the stadium issue needs resolving, I’m prepared to accept the Kirkby option as the way to retain ownership in Evertonian hands and achieving a fitting stadium in a decent location. Whilst Goodison Park/Stanley Park and Anfield have lots of footballing history, are the locations themselves that much to rave about really, I doubt they rank above ’decent locations’ either really. What makes those locations special is the great footballing history that occurred there. I believe it is more likely that Everton can create more valued history in the coming years at Kirkby if we have the finances that would help greatly. Kings Dock was a potentially a special stadium in a special location but that died a death so no point crying over that now. The Bestway/LCC shenenigans seem very fishy to me and ought to be ignored unless they can put their money where their mouth is immediately! I don’t have a vote but hope those that do make the right choice.... Up the blues!
Kevin..Do you really truly believe that the reason the club’s giving the fans a vote is so that they can say "Well you voted for/against it" if it all goes wrong.
You’ve even covered yourself to slag em off if the vote is a "no" and turns out badly by including the for/against in your post.
Grow up mate...if thats the best you can come up with you don’t even realise that your’e leading people towards a "yes" due to comments like that.
So Bill Kenwright and Keith Wyness have planned and plotted to move us out of the City because secretly they want it all to go pear shaped for us...and then they’ll go Nyerrrrr well you voted for it.
You’re pathetic.
Yes Tony, I know he screwed up there. I’d have loved that site, but it wasn’t to be, because Ken couldn’t get the cash to fund it. Now he can give us a stadium for an amount we can get together, so why not back him up this time? You "no"-voters talk about giving LCC more chances, but you’re not willing to give Ken the same thing now that there is a good prospect on the table... with the SINGLE major point being it lies a few hundred feet on the opposite side of a line on a map.
If you look at all the objections coming forth on this move, it all build on one thing.. that line on that map. I don’t see anyone talking about history, identity and so on when faced with us moving to a location on the other side of the city. Which would place the team further away from it’s grassroots. And I definately can’t see this arguments happening if that line was drawn 1 mile further out.
And, with the exception of Kings Dock, all locations promoted from LCC have been unsuitable, many of them even deemed so from their own experts.
Kevin. I am in exile like yourself and was ever-present @ GP when I lived back home in Huyton (& that included the Gordon Lee years!). My view is that the move of the RS to Stanley Park is an agressive act and meant to intimidate us into moving out. I think we should stay there and make their brand new stadium look tatty :-) On a more serious note, I viewed a banner in the RS crowd last season that read "One City, One Club, One Love". That says it all for me. If we leave Liverpool, we are giving it up to the RS. We are the first and most important club in Liverpool because we are only really supported by genuine scousers. I live in London and want to strangle the parents of every kid I see wearing a Liverpool shirt down here. We are THE Liverpool club. We have to stay!
cheers
Hugh
PS My son is a Londoner & he WILL be supporting Everton!!
I am for the Kirkby ground and although it will break my heart to leave GP we have to move forward,Kirkby is a boom town right now and thats why tesco are moving there . If we dont take this oppertunity I fear for our future
Boom town ah, your fucking joking funkie duck whatever your name is. Its got high unemployment and is one of the poorest areas in the country.
EVERTON R SCUM
0 EUROPEAN CUPS
LIVERPOOL FC RULE
5 EUROPEANS CUPS
lfc-till-i-die
The probem is, you are not a Liverpool club anymore. You’re not even British. You never where the club of the city and you definitely are not now....
Same goes for Yernided and Chelsea....
Billy brad, I am so impressed with you swearing,did somebody type this for you as I cannot imagine you can spell,you are probably a skinhead wear a black lacoste tracky and hang around shop doorways with all the other low lifes......what I stated is a FACT just ask the councillers and I travel in from St Helens evry day and see all the major developers buying land and the industrial park is booming,,,,,,,and I am not a wooly back as I was born in bootle, if you cant understand any big words posted on here ask your probation officer what they mean
lfc-till-i-die
If only you could tell your ’where’ from your ’were’.
Having supported the Blues for nearly 50 years, I love GP with a passion as strong as I have for the club. But....the simple fact is we have got to move - away from Goodison, out of the shadow of LFC and distance from them would not be a bad thing. But...the Kirby option is not the right one, not because of where it is but because the planned ground is not good enough. Compare it with what was planned for the Kings Dock (which was truly world class, would have hosted concerts with world class performers and would have helped to get us known). We should wait a few years longer and go for the truly great stadium that our great club deserves. We should wait till Billy No-Dough departs the board and someone with true vision and financial clout replaces him and brings in a team of professional business people with the ability to run the club the way it should be. We all know the way the club is run is a shambles - as is the way they have gone about a new stadium so far. Once we get real leadereship we will get the stadium we want and deserve. The plans for the Kirkby stadium look third rate and if the Board think they are going to attract loads of corporate supporters, they are kidding themselves because EFC don’t and never will do that. They can’t even sell all the corporate facilities they have now. My vote is a firm "No" to Kirkby and I urge all Blue fans to use their heads and not make an impulse decision which will leave us ranking alongside the also-rans of the Premiership
© ToffeeWeb
-sm.jpg)
-sm.jpg)
-sm.jpg)
-sm.jpg)
1 Posted 27/07/2007 at 18:23:28
Report abuse
People may think it’s pathetic and bitter to constantly compare ourselves to Liverpool FC but this is how most of us live every single day, taking abuse from and even occasionally enjoying friendly discussion with kopites. The identity of Everton is so important and Everton is a football club from the city of Liverpool. Of course I don’t want us to be left behind and realise we may have to move, and call me what you will, but we must retain our identity and remain in the city of Liverpool. There must be ways for this to happen, Bill and Keith just need to work harder.