The City headline in the paper today is " Red-hot Magenniss shows why he's the focal point Tigers need in their attack."
Pfft, you're a slave to technology. You should be ringing the City line from a call box while you wait for the green mail.
Strangely enough I walked by the phone box on endike lane the other day and thought about fiddling the call with a match in the mechanism !!
After homes matches the guy that used to sell the Green Mail around town always looked for me in Star of the West*, I gave him a quid and told him to keep the change. *They open at 5-30pm, half an hour before the other pubs.
1993 I started going regularly and barring 2008-11 when I lived in Leicester and I could only go when I was home, I've been to games every week, home, away and pre season. It doesn't matter how long I've been going, in no way does the length of my supporting career correlate to my viewpoints on Hull City or football in general. On today's headline, comfortable vs wasteful, of course you can be both. The stat 25 shots and 7 on target shows we were comfortably the better team because we were creating more chances, but we were wasteful because we only took two of them, one of them handed to us on a plate by their keeper. So the good thing is we are more than capable of dominating teams, even bigger teams in this division like we saw at Ipswich. That for me was our best performance of the season and a marker of what we can do. We aren't going to repeat that every game, it isn't realistic to assume so, but there's been more games than not this season where we've not killed a game off and it's put us at risk, in some cases we've gone on to lose. Which highlights my point; you can have pros and cons in the same game, but winning doesn't make the cons disappear, in this case, the lack of conversion of goalscoring opportunities. Barry Cooper is a decent replacement, he's been full of praise for the team and rightly so. It doesn't mean he can't create talking points about things we need to improve on. I appreciate Hull City coverage that gives an honest, objective reflection. If I want bias, I'll watch a fans forum or something.
I asked how long you had been supporting City, not to be clever or billy big bollocks, but because you had to be supporting us in the dire days. and I mean dire to understand from where some of us old timers form our prejudices. The worst time I remember was 1980, the height of RL popularity in Hull when we were fighting for our very existence at the foot of the old division 4. I seriously believe City could have slipped out of the Football League at the time and I doubt if anyone locally, except our staunchest of diehard fans, would have raised so much as an eyebrow. The HDM shoved RL down out throats at that time and rubbished us and our support almost on a daily basis. That lingers on too, sometimes on the back pages and all of the time in the heads of us old timers. I also did say that Barry Cooper is decent so far and I read and enjoy his reports. Personally I prefer the sort of 'everything is rosy' type of reporting the Mail do for our RL friends for City. Not for me, because I'd support City no matter what, but for the stay aways, those of a certain age who do still read the HDM headlines to form an opinion on the state of the club. I'll finish with an example from this week. HKR finished bottom of a tiny league for the second season in succession but didn't get relegated due to a change in the rules. The owner has bailed out and the club are in a bit of a state. Yet this week what did the HDM concentrate on ? The five players who have impressed most this season. And maybe it's all in my head ?
First few games of the season, we were as bad (if not worse) than some poor teams, and managed to win. We were saying the difference was the class upfront. We're now concerned because we dominated, but eventually scrambled a win. The important thing for a team hoping to get promotion is we are finding ways to win. We are looking stronger and stronger in terms of quality and depth of squad. I still have reservations about McCanns inflexibility. In the second half of the season, could teams actually adapt?
I was there when we were locked out, it doesn't get much more dire than that for me. I was still a child, but I remember being really worried, crying on a night because there was a strong chance I wouldn't get to see my football club again. I was too young to understand the nuances and the whys, but I knew we were in deep trouble. I didn't need a newspaper to tell me that. When the name change fiasco was going on, the HDM was firmly on the side of the fans, the open letter to the Allams back in the Summer showed exactly how they felt about the club. So when I see people saying that they don't give enough attention to City or that they are too negative, you have to understand that to somebody looking at it from a media point of view, it just doesn't come across that way. This is a headline from October: Hull KR verdict: Dismal Rovers slump to bottom of Super League after throwing game away early on. On the same weekend, we lost to Posh and they went with the headline: Peterborough United secure huge comeback win at Hull City, to dent Tigers' promotion hopes. Both of those headlines are objective because Hull KR did go bottom and they are generally crap. Peterborough's win was huge because they will be fighting us for promotion come the end of the season. I can't complain at that, it's spot on, though if I was to be really picky I'd say it doesn't really 'dent promotion hopes' in October. But there's no love in there, is there? Dismal is far worse than 'wasteful', if you ask me. Personally, I don't give a crap about RL, it's got nothing to do with City and my biggest gripe is the state of the pitch they used to leave it. If it's good for the city, fine, but I have zero interest in the game itself. Maybe it was different in the 80s, but today, from what I can see, there isn't any sort of love in with RL over Hull City. On the HDM website, if you can get past the adverts, the only team with their own banner title is Hull City. RL is filed under 'more'.
RL in Hull has got a lot to do with Hull City. Three professional clubs play in the same city, two share the same ground. I could go on about how even that arrangement is heavily weighted in favour of the RL club but no-one, or not many, would believe me. The three clubs compete with each other for support, for sponsorship, for media coverage in the same city. It has every thing to do with Hull City. Ideally the three would work together, work off each other, but in business it is cut throat and all three are in competition with each other. Perhaps you are not old enough to have witnessed that in this city. I have, and when RL had the upper hand ( more successful and we were crap) it is not a healthy position to be in. As for the 'lock-out', due to the HDM's lack of interest at the time everyone thought that David Lloyd was the guilty party in that little episode. When the move was deliberate to force the hand of the Sheffield Mafia who were fleecing the club. It was probably the best thing to happen for the club. But that is a little bit of history that you had to there at the time to know, and of a certain age because it went on under the noses of the local media. I couldn't care less what the HDM headlines were in October. This little spat began after the 'wasteful tigers' headline on Thursday morning and that was only highlighted because it contrasted exactly the opposite to the Yorkshire Post's view on the same game. We are obviously of different age groups and that is where the differences in opinion come. I respect yours and hope you respect mine. Meanwhile the important thing is UTT.
RL does no more damage to the pitch than City. I would leave to see us as sole users of the KC but it isn't going to happen.
As their studs are no different to those worn by City players how would that make any difference. This stuff about RL ruining the pitch is nonsense.
