“...and the goalscorer for Rovers is Billy Sharp, sponsored by Luxury Showers & Bathrooms!!!”
I swear I stopped in my tracks...well, not that I was making any tracks, as such...but certainly I momentarily froze in my seat. Not because my beloved QPR had just gone a goal down. Gloomy, wet winter’s day up north, large away following due to recent free-flowing, high-scoring performances...a defeat at ‘unfashionable’ Donny was always on the cards...indeed I now expect Sean O’Driscoll’s men to beat all-comers, so impressed was I by the man when we interviewed him for goalfood in the summer (S’OD meets goalfood). Nor was it the goalscorer’s identity that knocked me for six...former League One hotshot Billy Sharp has until recently consistently failed to score at Championship level...except against QPR.
No, it was the other bit tagged on the end. Did I just hear that right? Each player has a sponsor? And that sponsor’s name is read out when he scores a goal? And the coup de grace...the sponsor is a local bathroom merchant?!
Yes indeed I did hear right. And it got better...Donny got another goal, and also made three substitutions...and each one saw tannoy man bellow out the relevant sponsor’s name with increased gusto. My mate Dom & I started to invent imaginary dressing room scenarios as players argued about which was the hippest sponsor. We particularly liked the sound of ‘Northern Classics’ (who sponsored not one but two Rovers). Instantly we pictured some northern soul enthusiasts who happened to be Donny Rovers mad, and regaled their 20 year old players of choice with tales of stomping to ‘Competition Ain’t Nothin’ by Carl Carlton or Al Wilson’s ‘The Snake’ at Wigan Casino.
Imagine my disappointment when, after spending best part of a week developing and expanding this make believe world in my mind, I actually got round to visiting www.northernclassics.co.uk, only to discover it’s a car dealership.
I checked in with goalfood colleague Simon Harvey, who didn’t share my surprise. He informed me that this type of player sponsorship (ie. the hyperbolic tannoy announcements as opposed to the mere footnote in the programme) was big in Rugby League, and so was inevitably making inroads into football.
I had to look further. I surmised that such small scale sponsorship wasn’t de rigeur in the big bucks world of the Prem, where £1,500 from Luxury Showers & Bathrooms wouldn’t even pay the daily chiropodist’s bill of the playing squad’s pampered luvvies. But what of the Championship? Were QPR, flush as they allegedly are, deliberately missing out on essential ‘Plan B’ income as Donny & the rest trailblazed a pioneering scheme which brought vital money into the club coffers whilst simultaneously building bridges with the local business community? I was now convinced such parochial sponsorship initiatives were standard in League One and below...but in the ‘Plastic Prem’ world of the second tier, which clubs felt themselves beyond such hawking of their players’ hard-earned reputations, and which ones couldn’t give a toss about their star striker forever being associated with ‘Complete Tools’.
And so I investigated.
Show me the money!!! All players up for sponsorship, however embarrassed they’ll be to be linked with your business!!! Your logo slapped everywhere...and don’t forget the all-important tannoy announcements (whether your man is a goalscoring hero or is being subbed for having a ‘mare, the synergy of this guilt-edged brand-building opportunity remains the same, as your company name is screamed out at maximum volume!*):
Coventry / Doncaster / Leicester / Nottingham Forest / Plymouth
Er, yes, we do offer opportunities to sponsors...but we’re just a tad embarrassed by it...so we don’t actually put your logo on the website...and no, we don’t do anything unseemly such as announce the company name when your player scores*:
Barnsley / Ipswich / Swansea / Watford (fan sponsors rather than businesses, but shown on website) / West Brom
No, we’re above all that / no one will touch us with a barge pole (delete as applicable):
Blackpool / Bristol City / Cardiff / Crystal Palace (except, bizarrely, Julian Speroni, sponsored by Croydon Jubilee Church) / Derby / Middlesborough / Newcastle / Peterborough / Preston / QPR / Reading / Scunthorpe / Sheffield United / Sheffield Wednesday
...alas my fantasy world of Prem wannabes indulging in the most un-Prem like activities possible was unravelling before my eyes. 14 clubs out of 24 had no player sponsorships to speak of showing on their websites. I know QPR let fans sponsor players’ kits for the season – in return you get a footnote in the programme, and an invite at the season’s end to a ‘do’ where you meet the team and get the bit of kit you’ve sponsored. I suspect most of these 14 do something similarly low-key for the fans.
But I’d wanted more Northern Classics, more Luxury Showers & Bathrooms...so disregarding the 14 clubs who wouldn’t play ball, and the five who keep the sponsors relatively low key on their websites (*and thus I assume don’t indulge in the tannoy game), I decided to focus my final efforts on the five clubs happy to display their sponsors loud & proud (*at this point I should point out that I can’t say for certain if any of them other than Donny are tannoy warriors).
So I set myself a final mission, to find the most eye-catching sponsors from the playing squads of Coventry, Donny, Leicester, Forest & Plymouth.
Inevitably a raft of worthy Wernham Hogg-type companies are at the forefront of the trend. Plumbers, car dealers, home insurance companies, butchers and letting agents...oh, and ‘Domestic Appliance Repair Agents’ are on the roster at Leicester (clearly East Midlands slang for ‘odd job man’).
However, there are a few beauties that truly need celebrating. Some seem to be perfect fits for the players concerned. Coventry’s Freddy Eastwood is perhaps best known for living in a caravan during his time in Southend...the poor lad obviously needs building up, and Shire Famous Pies are just the men for the job. Leicester ‘keeper Chris Weale surely cannot be happy to be the choice of SpecSavers...team mate Aleksandar Tunchev probably feels ‘Total Motion’to be a more suitable epithet.
Plymouth’s Karl Duguid has the dubious distinction of being supported by Accord: Dispute Resolution in Cornwall (cue regional stereotype gags about fights over pasties). Over at Forest, I’ll bet Chris Cohen has dressing room bragging rights thanks to having landed the backing of My-Wardrobe.com, “the home of accessible designer fashion”. No doubt a very well turned out young man. Meanwhile Plymouth keeper Roman Larrieu is the man to tap up for a holiday, courtesy of his partnership with Ponsmere, “the hotel on the beach” (the beach in question being Perranporth, “one of Cornwall’s favourites”).
In the dressing room embarrassment stakes, Cov’s Sammy Clingan with Bluebell Blinds and Donny’s John Oster with Solutions 4 Cleaning certainly drew short straws...and we have to mention another Donny player, Martin Woods – or more to the point, his sponsor – here’s the logo they’ve asked to be placed on the Rovers website:
...blimey Graham, so you’re a designer for gawd’s sake...who’s going to employ you on the basis of that piece of crap?! Mind you, when surfing to see if Graham had anything better to offer, we very nearly completed the circle of this article beautifully when we found a Graham Smith who designed album sleeves for leading northern soul compilation specialists Kent Records. Alas we think this is not our sponsor...as we then stumbled across Graham Smith Design, Architectural Technologists, Doncaster D10...
However, we have a clear winner. This time it truly does help us complete the circle of the piece, as it demonstrates just how different this world is to that of the Prem. Quinton Fortune is a South African international, who appeared at both the 1998 and 2002 World Cup finals, and enjoyed a seven year stint at Manchester United. He has also played for Athletico Madrid, but since injury ruined his brief spell at Bolton, he has fallen on hard times, with a succession of failed trials in recent seasons.
Donny took a gamble and offered him a short term deal. It’s a far cry from Old Trafford...and doesn’t he know it. QUINTON FORTUNE – SPONSORED BY ICE CREAM DIRECT UK!!!
Footnote...whilst researching this article, we came across another Doncaster player who as yet doesn’t have a sponsor, but who does possess one of the greatest names in world football. Ladies & gentlemen, may we introduce you to...Mustapha Dumbuya...
