NUFC Fans United – the way forward?
Posted on September 6th, 2011 | 27 Comments |
In that meeting were some of the online elite of Newcastle United fan reporters. Malcolm Dix, shiteseats, Newcastle United Mad, MAOC, Steve Wraith and various other supporter groups. Myself, naturally, being the guest of honour.
Joking aside, the meeting in total lasted around 3 hours or so and we discussed a good few things and especially regarding the supporters group, the club, campaigns and various other things.
This article is primarily to bring awareness to certain fans. My notes are actually subjects for articles and I feel I’d be doing some of them a disservice given the weight of some of the points that were made.
Having not attended the first meeting last month, I had obviously missed some of the initial points. Gladly it seemed that didn’t matter and we blew into a rather straight forward agenda and generally just chatted, let out feelings out on some of the hot topics such as the sign removal/replacement, the standing problems and various other things that it would be difficult for any supporter group to really do much about.
The Evening Chronicle questions were an interesting subject as it seems the club had informed the Chronicle that the deadline was to be closed early. For what reason, we don’t know, but it’s definitely a curious decision although not entirely unexpected.
A lot of what was discussed was fairly straight forward and resulted in a bit of discussion and fairly straight forward answers as you would probably expect.
NUFC Fans United are primarily peaceful and admit whole heartedly that nobody will ever agree on any given subject, they also encourage opinions and disagreements if it can present a different perspective. They also encourage everybody to come along and join in regardless of your views and opinions.
The primary goal of NUFCFU is mainly to continue the work that they left off with the Fans Discussion Group they had with the board before relegation but as one man rightly said: “How long is too long without communication?”
One thing that did bother me about the meeting is that it felt almost as if they were attempting to set themselves up as a regulatory commission for other fan groups and protests; something that cropped up when we were discussing about the fans spreading themselves too thinly in regard to protests, boycott and so on. Of course I’m likely to have read it wrong but it appears that I wasn’t the only person who thought this.
Another group that caught my interest was the Mike Ashley Out Campaign who are very much a more pro-active group. I shared a pint with these lads after the meeting and must say I agree with a lot of their points which I will get into, again, on another article.
We did throw around some ideas for a protest and there were two that I very much enjoyed. One is, as we all know, the Bring Back the Scarves campaign which is something we all should aim for if we’re going to a match at the Cathedral. The other is one that was presented by the MAOC lads which is probably my favourite.
The idea has been brought up once or twice in various ways, shapes and forms and it’s primarily appealing to Ashley’s frugality. Basically we would wear our pre-Ashley era shirts with some of our old number 9 stars, or even just the old shirts – it’s up to you. It’s a simple yet effective effort to passive aggressively give Ashley a very big hint. Another idea was raised that it should just be the number 9 without any name on it at all.
I’ll be writing various articles over the next few days to cover the more important points.
All in all it’s definitely a group that could go the distance and it will be very interesting to see what comes of this. Only time will tell.
If you’d like to attend the next meeting, it will be on the 3rd of October at 6:30 PM at The Irish Bar.
NUFCBlog Author: Thump
Some say his bones are black and white but that is yet to be medically proven. Currently writes for a few different publications and likes to assert his imaginary authority on nobody in particular.
Beware: eats children.
Thump has written 36 articles on this blog.
“Another group that caught my interest was the Mike Ashley Out Campaign who are very much a more pro-active group.”
Aye, it sounds like it Thump. Were they the ones handing out the Kalashnikovs and the RPGs?