Yorkshire needs a top-flight football club...desparately
Ask any tourist in London where they hope to see on their trip here and they will more than likely tell you that they hope to take in some football at either Arsenal or Chelsea’s ground, maybe even Tottenham if they are being really adventurous or can’t get tickets for a quality side. Ask any tourist who has braved the trip up north to either Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle and I’m sure the likelihood that they will take in a game will be as close to 100% as you are able to get. This affiliation with football and in reality the Premier League not only boosts the profile of the city but with close to five thousand supporters from opposition clubs virtually guaranteed to come to town every fortnight it boosts visitor spend and bed-occupancy figures, especially for us in the northern reaches of the country.
Following Sheffield United’s teary but strangely inevitable relegation on the last day of the season back in may Yorkshire is again faced with the prospect of having no teams in the top tier of the English game, the self professed - some would say hyperbolic - “Most Exciting League in the World” (Copyright BSkyB). Leeds United’s stirring Champions League runs are now a distant memory following their spectacular, combustive demise and fall through the trapdoor of the Championship, parachute payments and all. The Blades’ steady progress under Warnock has now hit a hiccup following his departure and the less said of Wednesday and my now-hometown club Bradford City the better. There’s a real sense among the region that football is becoming something that other places “do”.
I guess I’d probably get a few emails if I didn’t mention Headingley at this point, test cricket matches have taken place there this summer and have been as successful as they usually are. Cricket and similarly, but in an entirely different way geographically at least, Rugby League are where this region’s strength seems to lie. It’s fair to say that I don’t know enough about League to comment with any great, informed perspective but I do know it is still very much a “niche” at National level, even with the inclusion of French side Catalan Dragons in this and last season’s competition.
The game of cricket though is certainly not undergoing a boom, the symptoms of this slow demise are probably best seen not in the recent, farcical and overlong World Cup but in the fact that children in the West Indies now want to be Allen Iverson rather than Viv Richards.
I really hope I’ll be able to watch some premiership football the season after next, and it looks like the task of putting Yorkshire and Humber back on the map will fall to the relegated and, ominously, managed by Brian Robson, Sheffield United. They’ll be ably, in some cases anyway, assisted by Sheffield Wednesday (9th last season) Barnsley (20th), Hull City (21st) and the newly promoted Scunthorpe United fresh from winning the League One Championship.
I fear though, it’ll be a little while longer until we see a team from the region lift the top division’s trophy or take on Valencia in a Champions League Semi-Final.
Following Sheffield United’s teary but strangely inevitable relegation on the last day of the season back in may Yorkshire is again faced with the prospect of having no teams in the top tier of the English game, the self professed - some would say hyperbolic - “Most Exciting League in the World” (Copyright BSkyB). Leeds United’s stirring Champions League runs are now a distant memory following their spectacular, combustive demise and fall through the trapdoor of the Championship, parachute payments and all. The Blades’ steady progress under Warnock has now hit a hiccup following his departure and the less said of Wednesday and my now-hometown club Bradford City the better. There’s a real sense among the region that football is becoming something that other places “do”.
I guess I’d probably get a few emails if I didn’t mention Headingley at this point, test cricket matches have taken place there this summer and have been as successful as they usually are. Cricket and similarly, but in an entirely different way geographically at least, Rugby League are where this region’s strength seems to lie. It’s fair to say that I don’t know enough about League to comment with any great, informed perspective but I do know it is still very much a “niche” at National level, even with the inclusion of French side Catalan Dragons in this and last season’s competition.
The game of cricket though is certainly not undergoing a boom, the symptoms of this slow demise are probably best seen not in the recent, farcical and overlong World Cup but in the fact that children in the West Indies now want to be Allen Iverson rather than Viv Richards.
I really hope I’ll be able to watch some premiership football the season after next, and it looks like the task of putting Yorkshire and Humber back on the map will fall to the relegated and, ominously, managed by Brian Robson, Sheffield United. They’ll be ably, in some cases anyway, assisted by Sheffield Wednesday (9th last season) Barnsley (20th), Hull City (21st) and the newly promoted Scunthorpe United fresh from winning the League One Championship.
I fear though, it’ll be a little while longer until we see a team from the region lift the top division’s trophy or take on Valencia in a Champions League Semi-Final.
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