Wasn't it Swansea who reported the state of the pitch at the KC to the PL after they'd played on it ? The subsequent enquiry leading to the removal of the groundsmen ?
Of course a lot of the reasons for their removal can't be gone into here. I know City consulted the lad who looked after Brid Town's pitch as they were impressed with the state of it and Leeds United had praised it after a preseason friendly. They offered him a job but he had a good job and pension scheme with the council and did the Brid Town stuff as a labour of love. He was a City fan, his son still goes, and would have loved to do it but with travelling costs he would have been no better off with less job security. Unfortunately that was to no avail as he died suddenly aged about 52. Anyway, he used to tell City fans in Brid going on about rugby ruining the pitch that it had little if any effect with the way RL is now with no contested scrums and playing with short studs as opposed to the longer ones years ago.
Vince Groak, the editor on In Any Kind of Weather fanzine was instrumental in the 15,000 stadium plan, the black and white seats idea and the quote that the only time Hull City will ever fill it will be to invite Leeds U to play there. He was the mouth piece at the time on RH and Look North and part of the FC Voices, a pressure group formed when FC took over the Gatehead Thunder franchise after their own club folded. This was the group that HCC invited to several meetings about the new stadium and its design etc. City fans got one invite, after everything had been signed sealed and delivered and we only got it after much pressure on HCC to give us one. It was lip service only as everything had already been decided. Glasgow Street was the given address of anti football, anti Hull City. Jim Gardner ? He virtually had his own column in the HDM at the time with his avalanche of letters bigging up FC and RL whilst dishing the dirt and rubbishing football and particular City, always unopposed. Karl Hutchinson was the face and voice of the FC website/facebook page or what ever it was in those days. 'Leeds United and Hull FC pride of Yorkshire' was his strap line. His hatred of Hull City was evident in every statement he made.
Hutchinson and Gardner were the two I was thinking of. I made up a name and went on the FC site with the signature "Hull City and Leeds Rhinos - Pride Of Yorkshire". This was met by a torrent of posts asking what sort of twat can support a club from another city? The first one was from someone who must have had an irony bypass operation with a tag of the FC and Liverpool FC badges entwined over the words Old Faithful You'll Never Walk Alone.
Swansea have won awards for the best pitch in the Premier League, so it’s obviously possible for a football and rugby club to ground share without any problems. They were right to complain though, it was ridiculous that a rugby game was played at the KCOM the night before a Premier League game.
I think, ironically, that Swansea City later on for contractual reasons had to have a union game the night before one of their games. Bristol Bears have played at Ashton Gate the night before a Bristol City game. I thought watching one of those Bristol City games that our groundstaff could do with having a word with them as the rugby marking the day after were less noticeable than at the KC a couple of weeks later. There are often RL games at Wigan the night before a football game with no complaints. The main problem appears to be the pitch itself at the KCOM.
The main problem and the reason for the complaint after the game v Swansea which followed a RL game being played the night before was that it hadn't been prepared by those paid to prepare it. Simple as that.
The groundsmen were sacked for working for FC when they should have been working for the SMC, not for the state of the pitch. If they were actually no good at their jobs, it took a hell of a long time to realise, they'd been there fifteen years.
The judge laughed the case for unfair dismissal out of court. The state of the pitch for the Swansea game was the reason it came to ahead. They had been paid to prepare it and they hadn't done it. You could say they had been taking the piss out of the club for 15 years too.
Actually, the club were found guilty of unfair dismissal, or more accurately, they admitted it, it was the claim for compensation that was dismissed.
That was a technicality as they didn’t follow their own disciplinary procedure nothing more It was obviously justified as they didn’t get compo Seem to remember the Trust backing them up without knowing the full facts. Another stupid choice by them
Were splitting hairs here. Without going into it all again, because its gone, there were certain procedures that had to be followed after a rugby league game to prepare the pitch for football and they were not done to the standard required. This brought an outside complaint against the club who were a PL club then. All PL clubs had/have certain standards to abide by.
AP makes an interesting point about the loss of the Premier Club income in that interview, something I think is often overlooked (or the Premier Tiger as some dipshit renamed it). The Premier Club was pretty much full when we moved to the KC, there were over 3,000 corporate members and they alone probably generated more income than we generate from all our ticket sales currently.
