For years the Saints had underperformed. They played in front of fans, whose city could barely afford a top flight football team. Then, one season, a catastrophe hit the club and all looked lost. Since that terrible event happened to the Saints, back in 2005, the club has since helped rebuild their morale and the morale of the city, in which they played.

The event I’m talking about, was Hurricane Katrina, the storm that devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005. The New Orleans Saints, known by many residents as the ‘Aints, due to their poor form, played at the 70,000 capacity Superdome, an thirty year old stadium that was built for the NFL franchise. Following the flooding caused by Katrina, the stadium was used as a refuge for many of the displaced people of New Orleans. Imagine 80% of the city of Southampton being flooded and nearly 30,000 of the population walking, rowing or being dropped off by helicopter at St. Mary’s Stadium. That’s what happened in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane.

 10 people died in the stadium during this time, one desperate man throwing himself off the upper tier to his death. The stadium was trashed and the team was forced to move to San Antonio to play their games. It was feared at the time that the Superdome would never be rebuilt and the Saints would stay in Texas. The Governor of Louisiana decided that this was not on the cards. She decided that with the sale of bonds and the help of the local and national governments, the stadium would be rebuilt, to offer a beacon of hope to the devastated community.

 As the flood waters receded, planning on the stadium’s reconstruction was started. A thousand workers had to replace nearly ten acres of roof, remove 4,000 tons of trash, extract 3.8 million gallons of water, re-plaster 750,000sq ft of walls, lay 68,000ft of artificial turf, clean 58,000 seats and much else besides. Many of these workers were, like the New Orleans Saints, without a home, but despite this, the work was completed and the team played the opening game of the 2006 season in front of over 70,000 fans. Before the game U2 and Green Day performed a cover of The Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming” and the team beat their fierce rivals, Atlanta Falcons, 23-3.

Although half the 450,000 population of New Orleans had left the area, every season ticket that season was sold for the first time in the club’s history. They reached the playoffs and their performance that season inspired a whole city. Tourists are back and the city has more restaurants than before the floods. Although the population is still a third less than before this terrible event, making it about the same size as Southampton, there is still great devastation, poverty and crime in the suburbs. It is in these areas that the New Orleans Saints players carry out charity work, in support of the many causes.

One player, Joe Horn, was so distressed by the plight of refugees shopping in a Houston Wal-Mart soon after Katrina that he went up to the cashiers, gave them his credit card and said: “Give these people whatever they need.”  Brees, the Saints quarterback, has raised $1.6 million for projects to help schools and children. About $500,000 of that money has come from marketing and sponsorship fees he has donated. He has made gifts from his own pocket, such as $50,000 he gave to a school in a deprived area, when he was told that its football team had no weights room.

 In New Orleans, there is no one that will say a football team is just entertainment for the fans, a diversion on a Saturday afternoon. They became the very fabric of the community and their players and staff did more to help New Orleans rebuild its spirit, than any number of local politicians. They lived up to their name…

Gary woke up early for a Saturday morning. He rolled out of his bed, in his smart apartment in Fratton Park and put his dressing gown on. Bending over, to pick up the paper that lay on the front door mat, he turned to the sports pages, as he wandered back into the kitchen.

“Solent City a Step Away from Euro Final” the headline read. His gaze focused on the date. Saturday, 31^st March, 2029. Easter was a time he always liked, ever since he was a child, but with history in the making, his club on the threshold of the European Final; it had a special meaning for him, this day.

The sun rose over his balcony and with another hot Spring day in prospect, he stepped into the shower and thought about what his Dad would be saying, when he met him at the station. He smiled, as he thought about his Dad’s tattoo, “Pompey ‘till I Die” and how ironic that sounded after the club had collapsed into receivership. The usual muttering, about how his dad would turn in his grave, would be the first thing to be brought up, as they took the 12:40 to Solent City Stadium. As Gary walked out into the bright spring sunshine, he read Jamie Redknapp’s comments, regarding the Barcelona game, on the back pages.

He certainly appeared to be the perfect manager, playing for two of the club’s that formed Solent City and being the son of the former manager of all of them. It seemed years ago, that Saints and Pompey merged, after so many years of conflict. Now, with the assimilation of the Bournemouth assets, including the former Bournemouth AFC stadium where Solent City trained, big time football was back on the South Coast, with no divisions between the fans and crowds mingling on the waterfront, which surrounded the 55,000 capacity Solent City Stadium. The sale of Fratton Park to developers, who were again riding high on the biggest property boom since 2007, was a distant memory, with the income funding the expansion of the old St. Mary’s Stadium. The shady dealings, the money laundering charges and the 15 point deduction, were enough to plunge Pompey into a downward spiral, which ended up in a ground share with their deadliest rivals, Southampton. Not that Saints had fared much better, being bought by Bournemouth after a bitter takeover battle.

Gary saw his Dad on the platform, looking much older than the young firebrand, who served a five year ban from football grounds in England, after the infamous “Battle of Fratton Park”, 25 years ago. After the usual mild rant about the need to travel 50 minutes, to watch a game of football, his Dad waxed lyrical about the clever ploy by Solent City’s owner, using Bournemouth AFC to buy Portsmouth out of administration and then make the bold bid for Southampton, subsequently merging them into the powerhouse of football, they had become. They settled down for the journey to the stadium, the train slowly picking up fans bedecked in the red and blue of City, with an expectant buzz filling the carriages, as it got near to the Stadium. Along the marinas on both banks of the river Itchen, yachts lined up in a never ending statement of wealth, their masts forming a forest that stretched on both sides of the river, clinking, clanking in the light breeze that greeted them, as they got off the train.

The stadium, certain to be at its’ capacity for the visit of Barcelona, glinted in the sunshine, and already the many Spanish fans milled around on the stadium platform, as they waited to enter the complex. Gary and his Dad bypassed the stadium and walked to the Solent City Marina, to enjoy tapas at their favourite bar. They sat together, overlooking the river, and as they gazed at the skyscrapers that dominated the Woolston skyline Gary said, “A bit better than a pie and a pint in Fratton, Dad” as he sipped a glass of Merlot. “How long do you think Jamie will be given, if we lose the tie today”? His Dad took a sip of his beer and squinting as the sun shone brightly overhead, looked across at the large skyscrapers over the river in Woolston.
“While his old man is alive, I can’t see Jamie leaving just yet, can you?”

Gary thought of the aging Harry Redknapp, majority shareholder of Solent City and smiled to himself. Maybe Harry and Jamie will be out, if the rumour of Rupert Lowe returning to the club was true. He decided to keep that thought to himself…

It can be argued that Southampton is the birthplace of the beautiful game. Delve into the history of our town and club, and an inspiring story, that should fascinate every Saints fan, even those without anoraks, comes to light.

Many may know the story, but I think it bears retelling, particularly considering the type of football that we are trying to play at the moment, albeit inconsistently.

In the early days of football, as the FA and the large public schools argued over the rules of the game, a small public school in Southampton, Banister Court School, taught their pupils football, rugby and cricket. In 1884, a Scottish banker, John Miller, living in São Paolo, sent his ten year old son, Charlie, to this school. It was on the playing fields of Banister Court School that Charlie learnt to play football. According to contemporaries, Charlie was a “fantastic dribbler of the ball, fast, agile and extremely skilful. He was also a great header of the ball and was deadly from free kicks.”

He played for the Hampshire County side and was soon invited to play for the Corinthians, a London team formed of players invited from public schools and universities. This Club played football using the Greek Olympian spirit of true sportsmanship in its’ purest form. If a penalty was conceded by the team, their goal keeper would not try to defend it. They were a team of ambassadors for the game that toured around the world and still exist today, where they play under the Corinthian Casuals name, as amateurs.

He was also asked to play for St. Mary’s YMA, the precursor to the team we all know and love. At that time, before the Dell was built, they played most of their games on the Common, games reportedly being interrupted by pedestrians, insistent on exercising their right to roam. More important matches, such as cup games, were played either at the County Cricket Ground in Northlands Road or the Antelope Cricket Ground in St Mary’s Road.

Charlie Miller played a style of football that was dictated largely by these types of pitches. Anyone who has played on the Common, will know that the pitches were frequently hard and dry. They were not suited to the slower, passing style of football, played by the northern clubs of the day, on the wetter pitches up north. The style played in the South of England, in Charlie’s day, consisted of fast running, dribbling and less passes, a style that required great skill and speed to execute. As there was no national league, nor even league football, in which St. Mary’s played, when Charlie left England to return to Brazil, it was very much the local style of football that he took with him.

On arriving in São Paulo, in 1894, Charlie had also brought with him footballs, a rule book and an abiding sense of the sportsmanship that he had learnt in Southampton. The first ever recorded football match in Brazil, took place on June 19th, 1899. It was between Mackenzie College and the São Paulo Athletic Club, Miller’s own team that he captained. Miller’s skills were apparently much greater than his teammates. He had a move involving the flick of his heel, which became known in Brazilian football as the “Chaleira”.

There is no Charlie Miller Suite at St. Mary’s. His name is lost in the mists of time, forgotten almost everywhere, apart from Southampton and São Paolo. I doubt if any of the Sotonians, watching as the noisy bikes thundered around the Southampton Speedway Track, or later, dancing the night away in the equally noisy Top Rank Suite, gave a thought to a small boy, playing football on the school football pitch, which stood on the site in the late Victorian era. If Charlie Miller had learnt his football in Blackburn, rather than Southampton, would Brazil have still won 5 World Cups? I would like to think not…

Soon, the money will start leaving football and the only people to really suffer, will be the players. The first group, (and only, in my opinion), to benefit from the Sky money will be the first to feel the cold wind of change, starting to blow through the terraces of the Premiership.

Back in our so-called summer of 2008, July 31st, to be exact, it was announced that:

“UK satellite TV broadcaster BSkyB has seen a sharp fall in profits, but said that its business was performing well in a challenging environment. Profit before tax totaled £60m in the 12 months to the end of June 2008, down from £724m a year earlier. The drop reflected the additional cost of the new Premier League football contract and accounting charges related to a stake in rival broadcaster ITV.”

The real problems that will surface at Sky, are likely to be downplayed in the media. When you own the media, this is an easy thing to do. In the brief intervening period, since Sky’s announcement was made, the world has become a very different place. A frightening place and one in which there will be a massive swing towards a socialist society, whatever the outcome of the Presidential vote in the US or our next one in the UK.

Insurance companies, banks and building societies are being nationalised at a rate we have never seen before. Legislation will be enacted to return many of these organisations to the social purpose for which they were designed and from which they sprung. Accountability will be demanded by their new owners, who are likely to be you and me. No more unbridled growth on the back of incentives, that reward the greedy, punish the responsible.

The Premier League has travelled a similar path since Sky waved the cash in the air. Away from the community based clubs, so admired by the many countries that took up the great Victorian invention. In the same way, the players travelled from playing for “my weekly wage, paid for by our supporters”, to playing for “my obscene weekly wage, paid for by fickle TV supporters”.

Soon, they will taste the new order and finally pay the price. A price that has never been demanded by the fans before. Rarely do the players get the blame, when a club is doing badly. The celebrity based, hero worship protects them from that responsibility and instead the manager, the chairman and the board feel the full force of the unreasonable expectation, in a league where there is only one winner and three losers.

Last night, our club, struggling to balance its books, fielded players who earn wages that have to be covered, largely, by the money the supporters spend. Not much money, judging by the crowd, but given the players performance on the night, good value.

I have a feeling many Premiership clubs will be forced to do the same as us. The day that Sky stops paying the players wages, with rich foreigners chipping in the rest, will be the day we get “our” clubs back.