Professional sport and shoe repairing machinery don’t seem to be the most natural bedfellows, but, over the years Standard have dabbled very occasionally with this glamorous world.
Many years ago, presumably when funds were on the low side, we often sold cops of stitching thread to Leicester City FC which they required back then to re-stitch their training footballs. Oh, the degradation!
In the last few years we have sold a number of shoe-stretching devices to some very big football clubs. In the past a player might use the same pair of boots for game after game and season after season. The boot becoming moulded to the foot through continued use. It would seem that in the present footballing climate boots are worn and discarded more regularly. I guess this explains the proliferation of different coloured boots and player’s habits of chopping and changing the colour and design. More than likely, boots also need replacing these days to reflect the colours on the players latest arm-length tattoo!
Football clubs have realised that with boots now needed to be readily playable much quicker that they needed outside assistance. This is where Standard Engineering comes in. Mindful that a footballer’s feet are the “tools of their trade”, we will invariably get a call from a minion at the training ground about a shoe/boot stretching device, and we would sell and ship the goods direct.
That team’s players would soon be benefitting from comfortable football boots, allowing their skilful feet to dance merrily around the glorious rectangles of hallowed turf around the Premier League and winning games for fun…..
At least that’s the theory! In reality, the last few clubs we have dealt with include Reading, QPR and Wigan who have all tumbled from the Premier League, but at least had the pleasure of having new, clean shoe-stretchers at their clubs to take the edge of the disappointment of relegation! We also supplied Manchester United, who have just suffered their worst season since the mid-15th Century. The only team who seem to have benefitted from our assistance are Southampton who have bought several of our stretchers and have been rewarded with a great season, culminating in an appreciable number of their players travelling with the England squad to win the World Cup in Brazil this year (note to self – this sentence may need a slight revision….)
We aren’t necessarily saying that Standard are responsible for Southampton’s upturn in fortunes, or that the winning of the World Cup (see above) is something we can claim for ourselves, but it’s nice to be a (very small) part of a greater success story!
One afternoon we were contacted by our contact at “The Saints” asking if we were prepared to sell one of our stretchers direct to a player. A pretty dumb question really! Of course we’d sell direct to a Premier League footballer! In many ways they are the perfect customer – the delivery van can easily find their place of work, and, given they think nothing of buying a new car/house every month, they don’t complain about the cost of our little machine!
The player in question was Jason Puncheon, who had just gone out on loan to Crystal Palace, who, at the time, were on a one-way trip back to the Championship. Within weeks of us delivering his shoe-stretcher Jason started to turn in some match-winning performances for the “Eagles” who suddenly gave themselves a fighting chance of beating the drop.
Leaving aside Jason’s ahem, distinctly underwhelming penalty kick at White Hart Lane (which may still not have come down!) he put in a number of great performances at Selhurst Park, scoring several vital goals. This upturn in form had two noticeable effects. For one, Palace eased up the league table and finished the season well clear of the relegation dog-fight.
The other result of Palace’s improvement on the pitch was that our Managing Director Keith Malyon suddenly remembered he was a life-long Eagles supporter, and every Monday the rest of the office were treated glowing praise of the continued brilliance of his “boys”.