No wanted to buy the club ..no one wanted to run the club. Those that were around at the time will remember that everything associated with Hull City was perceived as a joke ....apart from the the 2-3K loyal supporters that week in week out would keep going and doing what we could. BUT...what Fish did...was keep the club going....make the sacrifices required to ensure the club stayed alive....Duffen didnt give ****.....we may have been relegated but that was the consequence of the cost cutting...as per Bates at TWS. Dolans wages were poor in comparison to most of the other managers at the time.
Who made the club such an unattractive proposition to invest in? Fish was chairman from the summer of 1991 to the summer of 1997. This was a boom time for football after Italia 90 right through to Euro 96- interest in football was almost at an all time high. Except in Hull.
And once again EDG Wright/ E3 toughnut/ bus driver / multiposter extraordinary will twist a post to all about him .... YAWN. How are the book sales going? RAUS ARF DEAL WITH IT
Fish's role was to sell the club on behalf of Christopher Needler who spend all his time in Canada and was not prepared to invest any further. Irrelevant of what you call a "boom time" only crooks amd conmen would eventaully be prepared to invest.
Whose idea was it to sell the railway nameplate? Fish was the puppet chairman, happy to bask in the bogus glory, while the real boss did nowt.
Yep.......it was clearly all about the glory.....well worth all the **** he took over the years when he could have walked away!
He was utterly utterly inept and dragged the club to a new low due to his self-delusion that he could do the job.
What sacrifices did Fish make? He sacked the club secretary and did the job himself, then charged the club £80,000 for his last 12 months in that role. The club almost died on its feet at the High Court under Fish. Only a loan from Wastewise saved them the last time. Don Robinson wanted to buy the club but the offer to sell for £1 was withdrawn when Robby stepped forward. Fish alienated the fans from the club big time. And he sold the club nameplate then was caught out lying about it. How anyone can compare Duffens chairmanship to Fish was not around when Hull City/Fish/Dolan were the laughing stock of the Football League. Football was booming everywhere else whilst our club was shrinking by the hour.
Yes he could have walked away. But he didn't. He also made it impossible for anyone else to buy the club by moving the goalposts every time someone made an enquiry. Everything he did for Hull City, Hull City were charged for. Every letter, every phone call. Perhaps he was out of his depth. Perhaps he was Chris Needlers bitch for too long. But don't try and tell em he did it for the love of the club.
Clearly you were not around.....you have no idea of the FACTS and are probably about 15 years old are are quoting what your dad told you. Cuts had to be made. Some decisions may have been naive but the spirit was in the right place. Hard to understand now I know.
I was there pal. I was a shareholder of the club and a sponsor. Cuts had to be made yes because Fish was incapable of attracting any money/interest into the club. 'Some decisions may have been naïve' So true, not some but most. I still cannot understand if Fish was just totally inept as a chairman or he was deliberately running the club into the ground on behalf of 'reluctant' Chris Needler. And football was booming at that time all over the country yet we were playing from one of the newest stadiums in the country and half of it was deemed unsafe to use. Unsafe because of a lack of investment by the owners, who actually owned the lot, lock stock and barrel. Fish did alienate the fans from the club. We were minutes away from being wound up as a business at the High Court until Wastewise, a off-shoot from Humberside County Council stepped in with a loan, payable back when we sold Deano and/or Fettis. As for Dolan. PR was never his strong point and he did sign some decent players for us, Fettis, Darby, Peacock, perhaps Joyce but he did manage us to two relegations. That is a fact as is the fact that every club he managed at finished up being relegated. Clearly I was around, very around and perhaps the facts you think you know have been fed to you by someone who was very sympathetic to the club at that time. I put my own cash into the club in those days. Sadly not many others did. I supported them when thousands ditched them.
And thats the problem......people misunderstood the difference between the owners and Fish...he couldn't invest in infrastructure or playing staff without financial support. I, like others (maybe you) put thousands into club. Im no friend of his or have anything to do with him but the point of this part of ther thread was the comparison with Duffen. BTW...the Wastewise deal is a story in its self !!
I liked the terminology used by AN in their Things We Think, re the attendance of our disgraced ex-Chairman(who wasn't actually invited) - The man is a weapons grade arsehole.
Point taken. I don't suppose Fish was having the time of his life as City chairman at that time. But never forget he was a paid chairman and under his watch the club slumped to an all time low. I thought he was unable to attract any business to the club at all and many of the dealings with the club at that time were amateurish beyond belief. He alienated fans ex-players and the business world. Is there any difference between the way people see Fish to the way people now see Duffen? Under MF the club were virtually unsellable, it actually sold for the price on an average semi in Cottingham at the time. After Duffen the club attracted a local buyer who thought it was worth over £40m And we'd finally reached the Premier League smashing forever the myth that the club didn't want top grade football. No-one is perfect and both men made mistakes, MF took us to the bottom of the old 4th div, Duffen took us to the top of the Prem. One day we might get to know some actual facts regarding the Duffen-Bartlett days. One day. UTT
Seeing Duffen on Football Focus in August 2008, ringing the Premiership bell (be honest- how many of us ever thought it would get rung?), live on national tv from the KC before the Fulham game was one of the best moments of anyone's HCFC supporting life. Contrast that with Martin Fish being stupidly photographed next to the Birmingham team bus with its window broken in the North Stand car park at BP. And to think some silly ****s rail against Duffen for getting us into 'meaningless' friendlies like Serie A side Atalanta away. You would not be able to make it up.
