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Forest Green fans invited to rename club’s stadium

Fans of Forest Green have been invited to come up with a new name for the League Two club’s home stadium through an innovative partnership with drinks manufacturer Innocent.

The agreement officially rebrands The New Lawn as the ‘innocent [insert name here] stadium’ until a permanent name is found for the venue.

Supporters have been invited to submit suggestions for the stadium name via Forest Green’s Twitter or Facebook account. A panel from the club, including chairman Dale Vince, will then select a shortlist of the best names, with a final fan vote to decide the winning suggestion.

Innocent and Forest Green will draw up a shortlist of potential names in the coming days. The ‘innocent [insert name here] stadium’ moniker was used for Forest Green’s 1-1 draw against Walsall on Saturday and the club said this will be the only match that will feature the temporary name.

“This is a great idea from the Innocent team to crowdsource a name,” said Vince. “We can expect all sorts of suggestions, especially from fans of other clubs (this is football after all) – and it’s going to be fun.”

Anna Bateson, Innocent’s UK marketing director, added: “We’re a green company. They’re the greenest team in the world. Even the grass they play on is green. At the end of the day, it’s a match made in heaven.

“Our marketing team had the great idea to name the stadium but then had no great ideas for what to name it. The best they had was Greeny McGreenFace and we’re not calling it that. So rather than do the work themselves, our marketing department reckoned they’d just let someone else do it. So it’s over to the fans to decide.”

Last December, Forest Green was granted outline planning permission to build a new 5,000-seat wooden stadium. The complex would feature landscaped parking and two pitches, one of which would be a 4G playing surface and opened up to the local community.

Image: Forest Green Rovers