LAND

 

Turf, football turf, commands a price but what price can it fetch in a market desperate to elevate its commercial status and bring the punters in. A recent investigation into football land has fuelled anger from allotment residents. Newcastle United wanted to move to a larger site only a matter of minutes away, they were prevented by allotments. The pressures to rid the shovel pushers of their historic, worked field, became a city council hot potato. The land still grows it spuds, but for how much longer?

 
On an amateur football basis, a mental hospital was shut down after government changes which brought in 'care in the community'. Fierce competition grew for the land, offers from a supermarket chain and a golf course. Now the owners, a member of the Community Trust Initiative, seem ready to sell to a football team. Is this the best solution or the best use of land?

In a bid to become one of Europe's most successful amateur football clubs, the land will be overtaken by the football bug. Indeed, football is a pastime with a history, an activity founded on the positive benefits of sport , bringing with it a relationship to competition, mirrored in the commercial field. The competition creates the irony. Perhaps the loss of this land from a community use will further British football or the football team could go somewhere else, it already has a home but competion always wants more.