Morton vows to keep fighting for Blue Star

May 16 2009 by Nick Purewal, The Journal

DESPITE retiring from management, Bob Morton has vowed to keep fighting the football authorities on behalf of Newcastle Blue Star.

The outgoing football director told The Journal he made the decision to step down a month before the end of the season – but with the Football Stadium Improvement Fund demanding Blue Star repay £61,000 in grants, Morton is not quitting the fight.

Morton explained that the discrepancy over the sum, which could cripple the club, stems from the fact Blue Star no longer plays its matches at Druid Park, despite spending to improve that ground.

Where Morton is left nonplussed though, is that the FA were the ones who pushed for Blue Star to jump into the higher football pyramid two years ago, and change venues to Kingston Park in the process, when Falcons chairman Dave Thompson took over.

Morton is unsure whether Blue Star has a long-term future, but he is adamant there should be no money to repay.

“I’ve retired from the football, but I want to see this through, because it has happened on my watch,” said a furious Morton.

“I made the decision to retire a month before the end of the season, because with three promotions in five years I felt I had taken Blue Star as far as I could.

“There just isn’t the demand for a non-league team in Newcastle, we cannot compete with Newcastle United, especially with the likes of Blyth and Gateshead doing so well and quite rightly people who live in those towns go to watch those clubs.

“If we had an affinity with a town or a village that might be something, but traditionally the brewery workers would form this team and the company would put money into the team too.

“That’s no longer the case and without big financial backing it’s just not viable. Dave Thompson has done great things for Blue Star in the last two years, but in two years the biggest crowd we had at Kingston Park was 312 and the lowest 37 against Rossendale. That’s not enough, and there’s just not the appetite for the team that we hoped there would be.

“These grants they want repaying date back to 2000, and the FSIF wants percentages of several different grants repaid, because they say it breaks a clause of the contract now that we are no longer playing at The Wheatsheaf, or Druid Park as it is now known.

“A keen-eyed official has picked up on this, and as far as I know no other club has ever been forced to repay grants.

“If we have technically broken the contract, that is because the FA wanted us to move ground. But it was the FA and the authorities who were pushing for us to move into this new football pyramid system and to play at Kingston Park in the first place.

“Also Druid Park is not well-equipped enough to host matches in the division we are in now anyway, so we had to find somewhere else to play, or the whole thing would have been untenable.

“Although our first team don’t play at Druid all the junior sides do, the community is benefiting greatly from the facilities and all the money has been spent on upgrading and improving a facility that we use for the good of the game.

“This might be a breach of a clause on some historic grants, but that is nowhere near the full story and I will keep fighting with the authorities until they see sense. Blue Star cannot afford to pay back these grants, the FSIF sees that £61,000 as a debt, but we don’t see it like that at all.”