Stirling Albion Meerkats, yes, you did read that right. The idea comes from Paul Goodwin who is the spokesman for the Buy Stirling Albion campaign, a supporters trust organisation that is looking to buy the Forthbank Stadium based club from current octogenarian owner Peter McKenzie. The Scottish Second Division club being still on life support on the back of surviving two winding-up orders in recent months, along with having an estimated debt of around £1.5 million. With the marketing phenomenon of Aleksandr Orlov, the Meerkat fronting the advertising campaign of comparethemarket.com, seemingly getting bigger, they and Goodwin are looking to join forces in a potential takeover. The sponsorship sum in the media rumoured to be £50,000 per year for a five year period would obviously help the club, with Goodwin commenting to the Daily Record : "We can confirm we have had discussions with Compare The Market about our naming rights sponsorship and think it would be a very exciting partnership. However, we are also talking to several other companies about this innovative sponsorship." The idea could be dead in the water before it even gets a chance though with a Scottish Football Association spokesman commenting to BBC Sport : "Any proposed change of name would require to be submitted to the board for consideration and approval. Given that a name change for commercial purposes would have huge implications, the integrity of the game would be paramount in any decision-making process." In the wake of the news breaking out via the Daily Record, the Stirling Albion Supporters' Trust have reiterated on their website their hopes that in the wake of a takeover the sponsorship deal could still go through. Part of a statement on there dated the 22nd of January reading : "As we stated on 6th May, at our launch, all deals of this nature would have to be sanctioned by The League Management Committee of the Scottish Football League and The Scottish Football Association which is only right and proper. "It was our view, and remains the view of the campaign team, that if in future these bodies faced a choice between approving a temporary name change and seeing one of their member clubs disappear forever, they would give serious consideration to our form of sponsorship. "Our view is partly based on the precedents set around the world where this type of commercial arrangement exists. e.g. Red Bull Salzburg in Austria, FC Carl Zeiss AG in Germany or Cruz Azul who play in the Mexican League." But a precedent has already been set on this one in Scotland, although it was back in 1974. Works team Ferranti Thistle being allowed into the Scottish Football League only on the proviso that they changed their name to Meadowbank Thistle. The SFL really didn't do Ferranti/Meadowbank fans any favours in 1995 though when they allowed Thistle to be franchised off to Livingston. It has also been set in England too with Jimmy Hill's efforts in the early 1980s to rename Coventry City to Coventry Talbot as part of a row over advertising on football shirts and television coverage. Hill, after the Coventry Talbot idea had been vetoed, commissioning a City shirt with a large T in the middle of it. It was so integral to the design though that the TV companies boycotted coverage of Coventry until they made a different strip for televised matches. Back in Scotland, what this has done of course is bring to a much larger audience the continuing financial troubles of the club. The Buy Stirling Albion campaign already having 2200 members, who have paid a sum of £40 each - £35 of that being repayable if the club is not bought. The current amount of money raised being around £100,000, with the campaign also getting celebrity endorsement from Cristiano Ronaldo, Andy Murray and Gordon Ramsay. But in the grand scheme of things we're talking small fry here, £50,000 for a club name change in the first season, plus the £100,000 or so raised still only takes things to around 10% of the current debt at the moment. So unless someone comes in with a big wodge of cash in a takeover it looks like the Binos will either have historical debt hanging over them or they will have to go down the old 10p in the pound route. As we all know though, they won't be the first and they won't be the last, with football clubs creaking financially all around us. While the people in charge of clubs have to take a large amount of responsibility for running a club sensibly, perhaps some fans should also temper their expectations a little bit. Not many of us would want to live our own life in big levels of debt, so why expect football clubs to do it? |