Lost For Words

Jesus. ‘The New Manor’. What a boring, predictable, totally uninteresting name for a new stadium. And what a useless way to decide it too, allowing only those people to ‘vote’ who were prepared to write in to Maxwell expressing their support. Presumably the club would argue that these people were the ‘real’ fans, but as we know, people, that just ain’t so.

Look, it’s a crap name. It’s utterly lacking in interest, imagination or intelligence. What an achievement.

Interest? ‘The Manor Ground’ is an interesting name. It has character. ‘Elm Park’ likewise (however inappropriate!). ‘The Dell’. Even ‘Road’ names – Carrow Road, Kenilworth Road and so on – have local character, referring to local places and byways, mysterious to the away fan. Simply ‘Watlington Road’ would have achieved this. What character has ‘The New Manor’ got? None.

Imagination? Hardly, and hardly predictably, given the means by which it was chosen. I’m all for a ballot, provided i) we all get to vote and ii) we have some candidate names first, so that people get the benefit of other people’s imaginations. People could then have suggested using the opportunity to honour great names (e.g. Shotton, or Turner) or at least using their imaginations like that kid in the programme. The point is, inspirations don’t come to loads of people simultaneously, do they? So inevitably, you get the safest, most boring, least imaginative choice possible.

Intelligence? I imagine the rationale behind ‘The New Manor’ is to maintain continuity, and to keep alive an old tradition. But our memories and our presence alone achieve this without difficulty. All ‘The New Manor’ will do is remind us of what we have lost, and thereby be a cause of regret – every time someone says ‘are you going down the Manor Saturday?’

And being stuck with such a stupid name will irritate the hell out of you for years.

Ed Horton