Strongarm Tactics? Camerons sponsor Pool for Final

By Albatross
May 26 2005

Hartlepool United have announced that Camerons Brewery will be appearing on Pools shirts and shorts at Cardiff following the agreement of a sponsorship deal. Their Logo will appear on the back of the shirts, just above the names and numbers. Can you get Strongarm anywhere down there then?!

Camerons have of course been involved with sponsorship at Pools on and off for years, across several different owners of both club and brewery. Currently part of the Wolverhampton and Dudley group, their main involvement at the moment has been with sponsoring the Mill House Stand.

They have of course been shirt sponsors in the past, and now their name will appear on our shirts (and shorts) again for the biggest game in the club's history, alongside that of current sponsors Dove Energy. Unsurprisingly the club isn't saying exactly how much they will receive from this deal, but the text from the club referred to it as a "Major Sponsorship Deal" and presumably it's not come that cheap.

Camerons are far from the only people to want a piece of the action; apparently several national companies had made enquiries, but Pools made the decision to instead stick with a local sponsor that is much more likely to be interested in maintaining their involvement than a national one that might just be after coverage for this one game.

With ticket sales due to end shortly, it looks likely that around 16000 people will be in the Pools section in Cardiff. While I would like to believe that they are all HUFC fans there's no doubt that plenty of people with a loose association at best to the club will be travelling down. In some ways the feeling is that Pools are representing the whole of the North-East, although no doubt many Darlo fans would say otherwise.

In many ways this may be no bad thing. The big problem HUFC have had in recent years is getting fans to come and watch us play - despite our success over the last six years we still rarely get close to filling Victoria Park. Now we are taking more than twice what our ground can hold to one match. I'm sure there are people who haven't been to the Vic for years despite living in the town that are making the trip down to Cardiff; and if they get a taste for it, some of them may start turning up at our games next season. If they do, I'm sure IOR will be delighted.