Newcastle would do well to remember their version of Man and Superman

George Bernard Shaw’s final public speech was made in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was in 1936, Shaw was 80 and he stood on the stage of the People’s Theatre in the city and concluded: “This being my last speech in the theatre, I like it to be this one.”

There were obvious reasons why Shaw liked the People's Theatre. Its ethos chimed with his, and they staged his plays there regularly and enthusiastically. The People's Theatre also possessed a man called Colin Veitch.

You could understand why Shaw might find this man an attraction.

Veitch was a radical, a socialist, a campaigner who co-founded the People’s Theatre in 1911. He was also, from 1895 to 1914, a Newcastle United footballer. During that time – 1905, 1907 and 1909 – Newcastle won the league title – in 1905 for the first time.

In 1910 Newcastle won the FA Cup, also for the first time. It was the era that changed a club previously regional and peripheral into a national force. Newcastle United arrived on the country’s imagination and Colin Veitch was the club’s captain and emblem.

But that was only the half of it.

While Veitch was participating in the transformation of Newcastle United, which included the enlarging of St James’ Park, a minute’s walk from the ground, Veitch was also setting up the People’s Theatre with his brother Norman and others.

The first rooms they took are still there in a building off Percy Street, though the theatre has moved.

And it was there in 1921 that Shaw turned up to watch a production of his play Man and Superman. Veitch played the role of Malone.

As author and actor Chris Goulding put it: "It was said people would see Veitch running around on a Saturday afternoon at a match, then see him that same evening on stage. You can't imagine that happening now."

Indeed not, but then there are a lot of things you can't imagine happening now, at Newcastle United or elsewhere in the bubble-world of British football.

Boom sport
It's probably best to resist romanticising early 20th century society, when inequality was institutionalised and emerging professional footballers felt compelled to bend rules to take their due from directors wallowing in cash spurting from this new boom sport.

But when thinking of Veitch it is hard to ignore the issue of modern financial inequality, it is hard to ignore that when Newcastle play at St James’ today, it will be with Wonga splashed across stripes first made famous by him.

Facing Newcastle today are Hull City. They will be promoting “Cash Converters” on their jerseys.

This is Britain, where poverty and debt are normalised into everyday acceptance via the most important sport in the land.

Newcastle United's "owner", Mike Ashley, has his principal concern, Sports Direct, plastered all over St James'. What would Colin Veitch make of him?

Sports Direct is ever-expanding and the pitch-side advertisements in French at the recent Fulham game reflect the six Sports Direct shops now in France. It is probably handy, too, that the company team has its complement of French players.

Corporate strategy
Thus Newcastle and other clubs feel to their fans like they are becoming a branch of corporate strategy. Just think of how the concept of "sponsorship" has been normalised over the past couple of decades.

Disgruntled Manchester United fans have serious concerns about the hawking of the club around the globe. Did you know that “Mister Potato” are the “Official Savoury Snack Partner of Manchester United”?

Those fans heard on Wednesday United’s annual income was up 13 per cent to £363 million (€430 million).

But the Glazer family's leveraged takeover of the club meant that around £70 million (€83 million) of that was again spent on re-structuring debt at a club formed by railway workers in Newton Heath in 1878 and which is now registered in the Cayman Islands.

The makers of E-Lites electronic cigarettes have just announced that Celtic, the club of Brother Walfrid, is now “an official partner”. Well done, Celtic.

Teamsheets, mascots and socks, nothing is beyond corporate exploitation. Gareth Bale has his "celebration" trademarked.

And Sports Direct earn backslaps for jumping into the FTSE 100, in part because of Newcastle United’s profile, a profile first raised on Colin Veitch’s back.

And people still ask what Mike Ashley “gets” from Newcastle United? That weekly search party for football’s lost soul can be called off, again.

Meanwhile at The People’s Theatre on Newcastle’s Coast Road a bust of Shaw stares back at Chris Goulding.

The road leads from the city out towards the club’s training ground. A lot of Newcastle players will have driven past the People’s Theatre unaware of the former player who helped create it, unaware of Veitch full stop.

“There’s nothing in St James’ Park about him, you’d think he never existed,” said Goulding. “When people talk about the history of Newcastle United, it starts with the FA Cup runs of the 1950s.

“There’s newsreel footage and people are still alive who can remember, it’s much more in Newcastle’s folk memory. Colin Veitch wasn’t just around just before the second World War, he was here before the first World War.”

The latter was a war Veitch fought in, on the Western Front in France with the Royal Garrison Artillery. He survived and returned to Tyneside and the theatre. It was then he met Shaw.

Veitch’s contribution to popularising football on Tyneside was established by then. He was also instrumental in setting up the Professional Footballers’ Association and may not have envisaged its future leader earning a millionaire’s salary.

Along with Newcastle colleague, Belfast-born Bill McCracken, Veitch forced a change in the rules of the game, having made a mockery of the offside law that then existed.

Sacked
After the war Veitch rejoined the club as a coach/secretary and set up an early version of the modern youth team. The directors preferred buying players, disbanded it and sacked Veitch in 1926.

Kevin Keegan might just sigh at this point.

But thanks to Chris Goulding, “a one-man campaign”, Veitch has not disappeared completely. He is to be honoured next Wednesday: a blue plaque will be unveiled on his old house in the suburb of Heaton.

It could be a moment of self-recognition. Newcastle United’s last league title came in 1927 and there will be 50,000 or so at St James’ Park today.

Or it could be a moment when fans from Portsmouth to Newcastle reflect on what Veitch and Shaw understood a century ago and its relevance to modern ownership, that while many go and many sow, only the few reap.