MUCK and brass have long gone hand in hand for Newcastle businessman Sir John Hall. Having made a large part of a fortune estimated at more than £100 million from turning a 120 acre Gateshead wasteland into Europe's largest in door shopping centre, the 62-year-old miner's son has been concentrating his efforts on a green field site of a very different sort lately.
A lifelong supporter of Newcastle United, Mr Hall moved from the terraces to the boardroom in 1992 when, after a great deal of encouragement by the club's fans, he invested £5 million in order to stave off impending bankruptcy at the Tyneside club.
Since then he has turned the fortunes of the club dramatically around with the team now leading the race to win their first league title since 1927 and facing a crunch match on Monday next against Manchester United. Success on the field is starting to be matched by financial improvement, with the company moving into profit for the first time in years.
Unlike many of the game's other benefactors, however, Mr Hall insists that the money he has pumped into the club already - as well as any funds he may make available in the future - is an investment rather than simply a gift and that when the proper structures are in place he will seek a "fair" return on his investment.
"We're paying for the sins of our fathers and the lack of money put back into clubs over the years but we do treat anything we put in now as an investment. We (Mr Hall his son Douglas and associate Freddie Sheppard expect a return on that investment because anyone who comes in from the private sector and just treats football as a whim will find that football seriously damages your wealth. It's a never-ending hole in your pocket," Mr Hall told The Irish Times.
"I've never been involved with any business where the thinking is as short term as it is in football but I've been trying to get away from that. So far it's been our job to get the base in place. We needed a decent stadium to put people in and now we've built that and we needed a team that people would want to watch, which is there now. When we took over the turnover was £4.5 million, this year it will be £40 million and the target is somewhere around £65 or £75 million. At that stage it has to start paying its way."
The rapid growth in turnover is based on Mr Hall's ability to exploit the commercial potential of a club with enormous support in the city of Newcastle and of his willingness to learn from those who have travelled this particular path before him
"When I took over I went around all the big clubs in England to look at how they did things. Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United all throw their doors open and I picked up a lot from looking at the way they do things. United are clearly the market leaders in this area, though, and the way they do things has been the basis for a lot of what has gone on at this club over the past couple of years."
Manchester United may well already rue their hospitality. In a remarkably short space of time St James' Park has been developed into a 36,000 all-seat stadium and with a rapidly expanding reputation for providing "added value" - a favourite term of Mr Hall's.
The turnover of the club's shops has soared from £350,000 four years ago to £8.5 million today, while on match days more than 3,000 meals are served to corporate guests at the newly modernised stadium. Television and sponsorship revenues have also multiplied but Hall feels that there is still room for further growth in the years to come.
"We have a lot of plans for the next few years. We're going to make money out of everything that's humanly possible to allow us to compete with the best sides in Europe. We want to set up a television station (Magpie TV) when the city is fully cabled, which should be within two years, and we want to establish the Newcastle Sporting Club which will bring families who are interested in all sorts of different sports in. We're aiming for 100,000 members and when we have them I'll sell them insurance through the club and holidays through the club . . . the possibilities are endless."
Mr Hall sees these new commercial activities as a way of funding his Sporting Club idea which is based on similar organisations at Barcelona and Real Madrid. Already he has dusted down Newcastle's Gosforth rugby club and signed a string of international stars headed by Rob Andrew and also including Irish prop Nick Poppelwell. He has also revitalised the local athletics club and built up a major ice hockey side in the city.
That, however, is just the professional end of things and Hall also has his sights set on encouraging widespread grass roots involvement. "Sport is something that people are very interested in today. People say that we're not playing as much as we were but I think that that is changing and when we take so much out of a community we have to put something back. Sport, particularly in the areas with very high unemployment, is something that we can give people to take them off the street and help educate them.
"It might be that at the end of the day someone wants to play chess rather than football and that's fine. Whatever I can do to bring out the champions at the end of the day I'll do. If I can help to produce the next Steve Cram or Brendan Foster (the two outstanding runners from the North East of recent years) then tremendous, I'll do it."
The first phase of his ambitious plan was fulfilled with the opening of a health and fitness centre in the city last year but phase two, for which he is currently awaiting planning permission, is a little more ambitious. "We've bought a farm of 320 acres near the airport. This is going to be our Sporting Club complex. It will have pitches and other sports facilities, classrooms and a department of sports excellence and science.
"The capital cost is about £20 or £25 million and it will cost about £2 or £3 million a year to run but within five years we hope to be producing the next generation of sports stars. We're going to spread the net and bring through all the talent we can from all over the north east of England."
The aim is, of course, to feed this fresh supply of local talent into the high-profile clubs with ice hockey, for instance, also being specifically catered for by the provision of roller blade parks around the city. Hall hopes to attract some public sector funding as well as some sponsorship for the project but, he insists "one way or the other we'll do it".
In the immediate future, though, the priority is for Newcastle United to win the Premiership and move into the lucrative world of the European Champions League, where the top clubs across Europe play off for the European Cup. But if Newcastle can hold their nerve and their form over the coming weeks, even that success is likely to present new, if slightly welcome, problems. "There are a lot people who want to see the team play and we just can't get them all in. We need a stadium of 50-55,000 but to add on to our stadium, which is right in the middle of the city, is very expensive. We might have to add another tier or just move out somewhere else and give St James' to the rugby team but it would be a bit big. I'm not sure, we're thinking a lot about it at the moment," he ponders aloud.
It's a rare note of doubt from the man who claims he would rather be back in the gardens of his Wynyard Hall home (a stately mansion on 5,000 acres). But then for all his enthusiasm, he reckons his current life was foisted on him. "I was retired, I didn't ask for any of this. I simply took it on because the fans asked me and once I had taken it on I simply decided I better make a go of it."
