As regards the integrity of the vote, who will be cross-referencing the season ticket info on each ballot to the club's data base just in case someone accidently votes twice ? Is an anonymous ballot paper valid ? I think it would have been simpler with a show of hands at 3pm.....
Apparently, there is an independent company coming in to check the votes against the season ticket holder database and then count them. The ballot boxes are to remain locked until they're handed over to them, but most of them are arriving by email and can be seen by whoever prints them out. The club asked the FA to oversee it, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it.
You've got to wonder if the cost of legal challenges, submissions, independent assessors, security firms, loss of matchday revenue and merchandise is starting to bite a big chunk out of the potential revenue that a name change would provide.
An 'independent' company paid for by whom? Presumably the club? Therefore the Allams ... Therefore dependent rather than independent. No wonder the FA wanted nothing to do with it with questions like those.
Asked a few people around me in E7 how they would vote and all said they would vote NO but wished it was just a straight yes/no vote or a vote were you said no to the change but still backed the Allams. I actually thought the crowd were very subdued today, like there was a sad atmosphere around the place, people are just fed up of it all. I was trying to gauge how much support there was for the No vote and was quite cheered to see that when the flag went up at the West Brom end there was clapping from practically all of the South Stand, saw a few in West as well.
Yeah weird atmosphere inside the ground today. Both sets of fans were quiet. There was some celebration of the name change rejection early on but most of it subdued due to what's happened since then.
Another good view of the 'poll': There could be a new name on the cup this year. Would the FA really want it to be Hull Tigers? There are a few big ifs of course – three other clubs have their own ambitions of lifting the trophy at Wembley on 17 May. It’s also highly likely that football’s governing body will maintain its block on Assem Allam’s bid to change Hull City’s name, regardless of the outcome of the most pointless poll this side of Simferopol. Pointless because the exercise is too late, because the questions are loaded and because a matter which has the potential to change the face of football in England is far too important to be decided by the fans of one club. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the ballot is evidence of Dr Allam’s new-found faith in democracy for football fans; it’s purely his last chance of swaying the FA, of convincing them that he has undertaken meaningful consultation with Hull City fans. The roots of the problem are in Dr Allam’s self-confessed lack of understanding of football. In the summer of 2012 I interviewed him for nearly three hours, talking business and football while nibbling Ferrero Rocher in his sumptuous office. He joked about not being able to understand the offside law, but the smile had disappeared when he spoke of his frustration at the lack of loyalty within football, and a man who claims to rarely get annoyed was clearly at the end of his tether as he descrtibed his efforts to buy the KC Stadium from Hull City Council. What Dr Allam failed to appreciate then and has still not come to terms with now is that there is business, and then there is football business. He’d obviously never heard the old adage that the way to make a small fortune from investing in professional sport is to start with a large fortune. His claim that criticism doesn’t bother him won’t cause any ripples in the corporate world, but it has stirred up a few storms with Hull City supporters as he’s blundered his way from one PR disaster to another. In spite of occasionally irrational supporter opposition to many of Dr Allam’s controversial decisions it’s clear many fans know more than he does about how to run a football club. They recognise that as the owner of Hull City he was perfectly within his rights to sack Nick Barmby and Adam Pearson, to order the removal of Hull FC rugby league memorabilia from the walls of the stadium, to increase ticket prices for disabled fans, to raise the qualifying age limit for seniors, to hold a promotion celebration at the stadium rather than share it with the city centre. And they’ll defend his right to approach such issues in as clumsy and offensive a way as he sees fit. But the name of the club is not his to change, and claims that the switch would attract huge investment from overseas will always be shrouded by commercial confidentiality clauses. Let’s accept it is just a misunderstanding when we hear Dr Allam talk about Hull City Council rejecting his bid to buy the KC Stadium and senior city councillors respond that they have never received an offer. But what happens if there is a similar misunderstanding with the mystery backers in the Far East after the name change? Even if the name change helps to secure a lucrative sponsorship deal with Tiger Beer, what happens at the end of the term? By then Hull City will have pioneered the practice of football clubs adopting the name of their sponsor, and you’ll never get that genie back into the bottle. Think back a few years to the season when City were sponsored by Twydale Turkeys. Hull Turkeys would have attracted ridicule, and not just at Christmas. And how about Hull Pawnbokers under Cash Converters? Hull Cranswick Porkers anybody? The FA should block the change and also adopt a set of criteria to protect the heritage of the game and the individual clubs – establishing the name of a team, specifying the town/city/area with which teams are associated and within which they should be located and safeguarding the colours of the team’s first-choice kit. They should not be influenced by a vote which is tarnished by Dr Allam’s clear threat to withdraw his investment from the club, and by a procedure which makes it easy to identify how people voted. A secret ballot managed by an independent operator would be more costly and time-consuming, but it would produce a more genuine response. Within minutes of the ballot form being published some fans were voicing fears that the club could use the personal details to discriminate against dissenters in the distribution of Wembley tickets. Such a process can only increase the reluctance of people to vote, with a high “abstention” count likely to be portrayed by Dr Allam as a lack of concern about the name change and therefore an endorsement of his plans. So how should we vote? On the simple, single issue it has to be no to Hull Tigers, and the outcome would surely be a landslide victory for that campaign but for Dr Allam’s strategy of linking the ballot to a vote of confidence in his leadership. If Dr Allam loses and leaves that will be his decision. He may accuse the fans of having forced him out, but the reality is that all they’ll have done is resist begging him to stay. Certainly it is clear that almost all the fans would like Dr Allam to continue, but not at such a high cost to Hull City’s dignity and heritage. The whole episode is bonkers, but what Dr Allam has done is present the FA with an open goal – the opportunity to re-assert its authority and to re-affirm some of the traditions which make football such a great game. http://thetwounfortunates.com/exami...s&utm_campaign=examining-the-hull-city-ballot
Spot on, that. Pro name changers will attempt to read that article with smoke coming out of their ears. Not through anger, but as their brains struggle to process the information within.
I have attempted to vote several times, but it will not allow me to do so. It comes back saying Microsoft Outlook not recognised or something like that. Desperate to vote NO, Help needed as I live in Wiltshire and cannot take the ballot in personally.
First, e-mail the club [email protected] copy in the Premier League http://www.premierleague.com/content/premierleague/en-gb/contact-us.html and the FSF [email protected] explaining your problem and asking them how you can get your vote in in time. If you have no joy by Wednesday send me a PM.
A lot of people are having these problems, people on mobiles can't open the forms to vote, ballot papers blank themselves when sent and there's still a lot of people who haven't received their ballot email yet. I'd suggest opening the ballot paper, filling it in, saving it and sending it as an attachment, while also copying it back to your self, to see if it actually has anything on it when it arrives. For anyone having trouble getting hold of a ballot form, you can download one from here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/w8q2lp There were printed copies given out in a couple of pubs on Saturday, but as the club wouldn't allow the ballot box in the West Stand reception on Saturday, a lot couldn't actually post them.
