Tipp blue
If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
In 1999, The Independent newspaper journalist David Conn unexpectedly coined the nickname "The Grand Old Lady" for the stadium when he wrote "Another potential suitor has apparently thought better of Everton, walking away on Tuesday from the sagging Grand Old Lady of English football, leaving her still in desperate need of a makeover."Oo-er…you’ve kicked it off now with that statement.
Cue 50 pages of argument on who coined “Grand Old Lady” first and what is Commander Steve going to do about it.
For what it's worth I agree with @davek I don't like hearing "grand old lady" if the above extract from Wikipedia is accurate the term was developed from a negative viewpoint by adding "sagging" in front.. and "Leaving her still in desperate need of a makeover" after, Grand old lady was a term first used in an attempt to basically describe the ground as being ramshackle has seemed now to have become a term of endearment.
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davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Yep. Like someone self-ascribing the name Big Nose after someone called them it in the street.
A truly bizarre attraction.
And the perpetrator was a Kopite apologist too.
Jacko93
Player Valuation: £35m
Its a term that was maybe first publicly used by a journalist, and one that has become more widely used because people see it as a mark of respect to one the games grandest arenas.
It may well be that the journalist first heard the term in a Liverpool pub, full of Scouse dockers who spent every second weekend filling the terraces of Goodison Park, who knows, who cares.
If it was called "The s##thole", or "the dump", or "the stinks of p##s granny of football" then I'd be right with you. But there is no malice that can be taken from the term Grand Old Lady. It is a term that evokes images of grandeur, an icon, a place that hold memories of greatness, a monument of a bygone era in an ever changing sporting environment. All of that, as I see it, is true, and can all be used to describe Goodison Park.
Im not aware off the top of my head of any other grounds which have been marked with such a respectful moniker. What's Anfields nickname? White Hart Lane's? The Emirates? Would you rather we had been given Theatre of Dreams?
I get that you might just want to call it Goodison Park, which is cool, do so.
I refer you to the first 6 words of my post
Amended
Never heard anyone call someone else, "Hey grand old big nose", as yet Dave but I live in hope mate..
Tom Hughes
Player Valuation: £15m
I can remember people discussing the term over 20yrs ago. So it's hardly that recent a thing.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Be completely honest, when did you EVER say to someone: "I'm going to the Grand Old Lady"?
You didn't. No one ever has.
Tom Hughes
Player Valuation: £15m
It's used relatively sparingly because it's a reference to rarity by definition. But it's been used for buildings and venues of different types....
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Really?
After it had been used by a journalist and then discussed briefly as an interesting term to use, maybe. But to then use as a term of reference for your match day routine? Not a chance. None.
Thelwell??
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
So not "often" used at all then? And not to a hell of a lot of other old buildings/ships etc?
Jacko93
Player Valuation: £35m
I don't, I go to Goodison and I always have, as do thousands of other people. But I'm not the one getting wound up about people describing Goodison Park as the Grand Old Lady of English football. Its a descriptive term.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
And neither will you. Because it would have started out as an insult and therefore not likely to be adopted by the victim.
...unless it's perpetrated by the hand of some 'clever' journalist using an insult about Goodison Park.
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