Many of you will have heard about Norwich City Sporting Director Stuart Webber’s proposed 2023 attempt to reach the pinnacle of the world. No, not to achieve a Champions League place but to climb Mount Everest.
I must admit to feeling a bit torn about this, from a City point of view.
On one hand, I find it refreshing we have someone with such amazing get-up-and-go leading the club on a sporting level. Someone patently with the vision to identify highly ambitious targets; someone with the desire to gain the skills to achieve them; and finally the chutzpah to follow through and complete the job.
All highly commendable and desirable qualities. In a Sporting Director.
However, on the other North Face-gloved hand, this does seem to be happening on ‘our’ time (ie. the club’s) when perhaps other more relevant and potent problems are facing us and waggling their icy fists in our face. I can only assume these extra-curricular activities were agreed as part of the package when he stayed on after last season.
But maybe the two aren’t entirely incompatible and, hopefully, the club and fans will ultimately benefit.
But that’s not all there is at stake. There is a charity involved, and that can only be good. But which charity is Stuart climbing for?
The organisation is called ‘The Summit Foundation’, a charity founded by Stuart and his wife Zoe Webber (who also sits on the City board as an Executive Director).
Their website – thesummitfoundation.co.uk – describes its aims as follows:
‘(The foundation) aims to create awareness and opportunities for young people to help them achieve their potential. It works with other charitable organisations to create programmes to educate and create better lives.
‘The aims are simple, (to) help our little corner of the world to get better and let the youth of today educate and provide a better way for the people of tomorrow.
‘Society is in a challenging place and it’s never been harder for young people to find direction, we need to show young people that their aspirations can be achieved irrespective of their background. It’s hard for young people to break the poverty cycle, by encouraging better well-being, through nutrition, sleep and exercise, we can help create better educational attainment and better opportunities.
‘We also aim to inspire brighter futures and build the confidence in young people to take that step on their own journey. Some of our fundraising activities will also focus on encouraging children to achieve.’
Very positive, very ambitious, and very generous. Exciting aims worth supporting.
As part of his training, Stuart aims to climb six peaks in 2022. They are as follows: Cotopaxi and Chimborazo in Ecuador in June; Mont Blanc and Gran Paradiso in the Alps in September; and Island Peak in the Himalayas in November.
To accompany the challenges he plans a supportive online offering called ‘The Climb Podcast’ (with Jonathan Parramint) which launches on 14 April.
Looking at the big picture, regardless of possible work conflicts, this is an extraordinary challenge for Stuart to take on and extremely worthy of our support to ensure as many people as possible and hopefully society as a whole benefit as a result.
As such, I register it with the classification: ‘Good thing’. And I hope you agree.
It’s so important, especially in these difficult times, to support anybody trying to make good things happen for themselves, for the people around them, and for society as a whole. In fact, I think this is a time for heroes, and in this context, Stuart Webber is a hero.
PS. One small thought, from a City perspective, if Stuart does make it up Everest, will he plant a City flag in the little tuft of snow at the top?
Would be nice to see a bit of green and yellow fluttering away on Sagamartha at the top of the world – ‘the Peak of Heaven’.
It will be very interesting to see the general consensus of opinion re Stuart’s epic challenge. It is refreshing to see someone achieving extraordinary things, I salute you and wish you well.
How does this affect Norwich City is the bigger issue for us supporters.
The club is in safe hands following the last four or five years of the current stewardship, Ok we would all have liked to be in a better position in the league and playing an elevated level of Farkeball but that would have cost countless millions. Give Stuart Webber the backing of an oil rich nation and I think we would have seen a very different league position. So given that we have an elderly couple who are no richer than some of the local Norfolk farmers providing the funding for our club he has done a pretty amazing job.
Stuart as you scale Everest make sure you recruit the the very best Sherpas you can afford and then apply the same to our playing staff back at Carrow road because some of our squad are not pulling their weight.
Can we really say we are in safer hands than we were in say 2016? Both the current regime and the previous regime under McNally have been disadvantaged by a lack of cash. The funding for this club in the past decade or so has been made by fans and other customers that’s what self funding means at the club, not a penny from a bank or a director loan to help with cashflow. We have a weaker squad than the one left by McNally and that is damning for Webber. We have to win promotion or we are back to the crisis of 2017.
Very early on in Stuart’s tenure he gave an interview during which he said (and to paraphrase) “if you’re not in the ground, you can’t have an opinion on the football”. I believe this was in response to Canary Callers who aren’t at the game.
Being someone who isn’t “in the ground” that struck me as an quite arrogant and as we later found out during lockdown, absurd. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve never been on board with Webber.
The long winded point being, if a fan can’t have an opinion if they’re not in the ground, can a Sporting Director have one when focusing on other ventures and is half way up a mountain?
The next 9 months are critical for Webber. If by the time of the next AGM, we are not in or around the promotion places and if we are pleading poverty in the accounts then somebody will have to answer some serious questions. Maybe Webber, maybe his wife or maybe another married couple at the club. I look at the current squad and I can’t see a promotion winning team and I don’t think we have the cash for a rebuild
Chris, you write … “As such, I register it (the climbing and the charity) with the classification: ‘Good thing’. And I hope you agree.”
Sorry, but I do not. Many reasons but let’s start with one …
Our very well paid ‘Sporting Director’ was making his way up Kilimanjaro during the transfer window. Just think about that. Irrespective of whether NCFC were going to sign a player or not our ‘Sporting Director’, responsible for bringing in players (or releasing them) was in Tanzania worrying about being unable to get a signal to view a City result or contact his wife (see his diary entry on Summit Foundation website.)
I find that totally astonishing but not in a good way.
Fair comment, Andrew. Like you my main issue is whether the two things are compatible. MFW stalwart Mick Dennis, a journalist of long-standing integrity and achievement, commented on Twitter in response to the article saying how the situation arose in the first place. His suggested reasons made a lot of sense and illuminated beautifully why we are where we are.
I’m not sure what Mick was selling, but I’m stunned you bought it.
This year is the culmination of the 5 year plan. After the summer’s transfer window, this was the second most important transfer window in half a decade. As we have seen, we were still in the running for survival. With some transfers in/out, perhaps a clever loan, it’s not inconceivable we could have survived.
Stuart (in somewhat secrecy) climbed a mountain to wave a white flag, instead of doing his actual job at the most critical of times.
Feels to me like he’s taking the mickey and I have serious doubts as his whether the focus remains. No doubt he’s not taken a pay cut despite all this extra time off. Whilst the charity thing is laudable on the face of it, the reality is it appears to have been created after he decided to do this and isn’t the prime motivation. Not quite sure why he couldn’t have done it for the CSF rather than them set up a different foundation with what appears similar aims?