They think it’s all over for ‘Rose West Stand’
Own goal for Southend as sponsorship deal means renamed terrace now sports name of serial killer
‘We are grateful for Gilbert and Rose’s sponsorship and we look forward to working with them’
WHEN estate agents Spencer Gilbert and Perry Rose decided to sponsor their local football club, they surely had high hopes of an impressive season on the pitch while reaping the rewards off it.
But unbeknownst to them, their deal to secure the naming rights to Southend United’s West Stand would lead to an association with one of Britain’s worst serial killers. The Gilbert and Rose West Stand, as it is now called, was mocked online yesterday as the branding appeared on fans’ season tickets and the club website.
Despite the issue being raised at a meeting between supporters and the club’s leadership this week, there were initially no plans to address it because of the potential costs involved.
Now, The Daily Telegraph has been told Southend are looking to change the stand’s name to the Gilbert and Rose Stand, G&R West Stand, or the West Stand sponsored by Gilbert and Rose.
Advertising boards around the ground, which simply read “Gilbert and Rose”, will be unaffected. A Southend spokesman said: “We are grateful for Gilbert and Rose’s sponsorship for the coming season and we look forward to working with them in a number of areas, including community projects.”
Rose West, 68, helped her husband Fred in the torture and murder of at least nine young women between 1973 and 1987 and also murdered her eightyear-old stepdaughter in 1971.
West, whose husband took his own life in prison while awaiting trial, was only the second woman in the UK in modern times after Myra Hindley to be handed a whole-life tariff.
The gaffe is the latest calamity to befall Southend. In 2006, the club knocked a Manchester United side featuring Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo out of the League Cup. But they nearly went bust afterwards for failing to pay both their players and the taxman.
Winding-up petitions were dismissed, most recently in October 2020, but that did not stop the seaside club plunging out of the professional leagues for the first time in their history.
Just this summer, charges against long-serving chairman Ron Martin and former chief executive Geoffrey King, over unpaid taxes, were dismissed at Southwark Crown Court.
Mr Martin has long been attempting to relocate the club from Roots Hall to a “state-of-the-art” new stadium at nearby Fossetts Farm, and a statement he posted on the club website last month proclaimed he would continue to work on delivering that project.
That project includes the construction of a 107-bedroom hotel, and he had been reported to be seeking a £30million government loan to help finance it.