Why Exeter City and Newcastle United share almost the same stadium name

Ask a football supporter where St James Park is and the answer may depend on where they are from. For millions of Premier League fans, the name points north to Newcastle. In Devon, however, there is only one obvious answer: the home of Exeter City.

The two grounds sit more than 350 miles apart, yet carry almost identical names. Exeter play at St James Park, while Newcastle’s home is officially St. James’ Park. That tiny difference in punctuation became rather important earlier this year.

In March, a Barcelona supporter travelling from London for a Champions League tie against Newcastle followed his phone to the wrong ground and arrived in Exeter instead. The mistake was only discovered when he presented his Barcelona ticket at the turnstiles. Exeter City staff took pity on him and gave him a ticket for their League One match against Lincoln City that evening. 

It was an amusing mix-up, but the shared name is no coincidence of modern football branding.

Exeter’s version can be traced back to St James’s Church, which was consecrated in 1836 and stood beside the land on which the ground developed. During the nineteenth century, the area was referred to in several ways, including St James Field, St James’s Park and St James’ Field. The church was badly damaged during the Exeter Blitz in 1942 and was later demolished, but the name survived. 

St Sidwell’s United, the club that would become Exeter City, moved to St James Park in 1903. The club adopted the Exeter City name the following year, and the ground has remained at the heart of the Grecians’ story ever since. 

Newcastle’s St. James’ Park developed independently. According to Newcastle United, a hospital and chapel dedicated to St James once stood close to the site of today’s Great North Museum: Hancock. The surrounding area carried the St James name long before Newcastle United took up residence. Football was played there as early as 1880, with Newcastle United settling at the ground in 1892. 

The names may be almost identical, but the price of watching football at the two grounds is another matter.

Sharing a name does not mean sharing a price tag. For sold-out Newcastle United matches, a ticket can be worth around £130 on the resale market, according to TicketSeal, with the value rising further for particularly high-demand fixtures. Exeter City, meanwhile, charges £21 in advance for an adult standing ticket on the Big Bank this season, or £29 for an adult seat.

One St James Park is a 52,000-plus Premier League arena; the other is a far more intimate, supporter-owned League One home in Devon. They may share a name and more than a century of football history, but for Exeter supporters there has never been much doubt about which one is the real St James Park.

And after one Barcelona fan’s 366-mile detour, perhaps the missing apostrophe deserves a little more respect.