It's my dad's 70th soon - he is a lifelong fan, was going every week back in the golden era and took me as a kid, we try and get up to a handful of games a season. As a special thing I looked into doing the hosptiality option, talked it through with the club as they offer different packages and decided to go the whole hog and do one of the three the 'match sponser' options. If you have a program you'll see his name (Trevor) on the back page.
I was keen as I know John Wark does the hosting in the restaurant and he is my dads all time favorite player.
You get car parking at the multi-story on Constaintine road, arrive for 12:30 meal. As we came upto the entrace to the Robson suite I saw the pitch and walked over for a little look, it was right in the corner where the players tunnel is, so was amazing to see/feel the view the players get an imagine what that's like for them, a lovely steward took a nice photo of us by the tunnel.
Then John Wark comes walking along, stopped for a chat, tells a story etc and has a pic with my dad, he was chuffed!
We went up for the meal, as a match sponser you get a table right by the prenstation area so we felt right in the thick of it, the was a lovely guy Roger doing the toast-master role and John was walking round chatting to people, then reads the team out in front of us etc.
2 course Meal was nice, excellent service, goodie bag, match quiz etc - All a really nice experience.
Took our seats outside the suite, you get a padded seat but its otherwise pretty much the same. John was sat right in front of my dad so he was again thrilled by this and had interactions with him during the game, often turning to me to say 'is this really happening!'. He also looked up before the match and said 'my names on the scoreboard!' - again that was a nice touch you get and was just something he happend to see.
Great to see the team do well, never seen us that clinical, didnt think we were amazing but we were ruthless today, and nice to get a goal down 'our end' too.
Half time you get sausage rolls, then at full time you get cake
, so it felt a nice overall experience. As a the home shirt sponsor we then had a presenation of a home shirt signed by all the players, presented by man of the match Massimo Luongo, so that was really cool and my dad will frame that to display. Honestly it was an epic day, hope this doesnt come across in the wrong way, I felt blessed to be able to do that for my dad and it will be a special memory for us, I'm very aware you never know what's around the corner -espeically with elderly parents.
I'd throughly recomended this as a special thing to do, amazing day and well worth it. Managed to not tell him until we arrived so he was quite taken back.
Not sure I can easily attach pics as I don't have any hosted online, but got some nice pics from the day.
Just wanted to share my thoughts on it and would really recomend it.
