IT’S BEHIND YOU! FROM SAVIOURS TO PANTOMIME VILLAINS
“I’m just bored of the whole lot of it” he said as he scoffed his microwaved pie too quickly in the West Stand at the KCOM last week. “I don’t enjoy coming ‘ere as much as I should and some of me mates won’t come back till Batman and Robin leave.”
Does that sound familiar? Come on let’s be honest. We’re all sick to the back teeth of hearing about takeovers, new bids for Hull City, or another consortium ready to do business. We just want our Club back fast and in the hands of responsible owners.
It’s a saga. A bad soap opera. It’s driving us mad. Whatever we thought about Adam Pearson and Paul Duffen we just wanted them to do something and do it fast. Chien Lee already owns FC Nice, we’d have accepted him readily. Peter Grieve might not have been so bad. Such is our impatience we might have happily forgiven anyone for past misdemeanours. We’re now so desperate for news of change we’d consider anybody. Many Hull City fans are so fed up they might not even care if the necessary due diligence test was by passed if it meant an immediate departure for Assem and Ehab on a fast train from the KCOM to Melton Halt.
Let’s not beat about the bush, the reason for the rows of empty seats, low attendances and the heavy hearts of Hull City fans is the irresponsible and totally inappropriate behaviour of our owners. For 3 years they have been on the slippery slope from saviours of Hull City to a role where they are perceived as toxic and committed to revenge and long term damage. They have slumped from heroes to pantomime villains. It’s a sad end but they have largely brought it on themselves through a total block on communication, no interface with fans and some quite overwhelmingly ill judged decisions.
Most notably their highly dubious ‘Membership Scheme’ looks like nothing more than a mechanism to reap revenge on the fans. Assem and Ehab Allam have never recovered from the day the FA put them in their place with a resounding NO to their name change request. Their current dithering follows a continued lack of communication and a disastrous catalogue of poor decisions and a dreadful PR machine that eventually crashed off the rails with the bizarre membership scheme idea, which will probably go down as the most embarrassing and ill judged decision in our proud 112 year history. The withdrawal of concessions for the young and elderly was nothing less than scandalous.
Hull City supporters are a unique breed. Their support is unwavering, often fanatical, bordering sometimes on obsessive. As we head for a crunch game at Sunderland this weekend and look forward to an exciting Cup quarter final against the rampant Geordies we will as always remain 100% behind the team who wear the black and amber each week. We will even cheer them on in shirts of cactus pink. But fans are sick and tired of the Allams and their dithering. The paying public can only be messed about for so long. We want to feel part of the Club again and help give the off pitch part of the Club a complete makeover.
Until the Allams leave it’s going to be a bleak mid winter and attendances and the overall enthusiasm of Hull City fans is bound to be affected. We are a resilient bunch and we’ve been through a lot in our time but watching our owners happily running down the Club is tough to take and it’s surprising there aren’t even more empty seats at the KCOM.
When BBC Radio Humberside’s David ‘Burnsy’ Burns recently questioned our resolve and asked if the fight had gone out of Hull City fans he was either being mischievous or he had totally missed the point. We await the day when the ‘real’ Hull City is released and becomes part of the community again. Only then can we move forward. It’s then we will press to rebuild and the real battle will begin, with the Hull City Supporters Trust face to face with new owners and hopefully soon to be fighting on the same side.
“It’s behind you” will shortly be the cry of the pantomime audiences in Hull this festive season. Unless they want to be cast as evil villains in local pantomimes for years to come, it’s time for our owners to put their Hull City experience behind them and return to focus on the world of marine generators, a business environment they presumably understand rather better than football.
So whether you’re heading for Cinderella or Mother Goose, or whatever panto takes your fancy, let’s hope Hull City fans can find their Aladdin sometime this festive season and get him to rub his magic lamp. Or some magic beans from Jack and the Beanstalk would do nicely. The Allams have turned us into pumpkins for too long. We just want someone to wave a magic wand and make everything right again and then to wish us a Happy Christmas and all the very best for the vital 2017 Transfer Window.
Peter Johnson (Tigerlink) also blogs on www.tigerlink.co.uk.
