ctwd now out in the open

The point I was trying to make is that it is easy for SOME of you to claim that such and such person is telling porkies about the benefits of changing the name. but to the majority of us, like me, who aren't at all connected to the club like you are, it is much harder. We have to just trust what is being said by certain individuals.

It is far from being clear and well documented from where I stand. It's all about who you choose to believe.

 

If you've been remotely interested in the name change debate I fail to see how you have to take anyone's word for anything. The arguments against - often by experts - have been regurgitated over and over again. Nothing to do with being "connected to the club". It's all out there in the public domain.

The coherent arguments FOR the name change are harder to find as they don't exist.

 

I've seen some of the documents from experts pointing out the weakness of the proposed name change on the web. Some summaries are even posted on this thread. They're not that difficult to find if you look.

Some elements need to be pieced together based on bits from several places, so the root cause of the problems is perhaps less well documented, but I think most looking into it with an open mind would soon draw the conclusion that the issue is the fall out with the Council. A big clue in this is the lack of credible evidence to support the business case suggested, and comments from the chairman himself.

What are not as easy to find are credible opinions showing any benefit to a name change. The opportunity for the Club to sell their idea came with their presentation to the FA, who heard all arguments and rejected it.

 

Problem is when AA opens his mush something different comes out every time & to confound matters further EA says something different too.

We don't necessarily know what's the truth but we do know some (maybe all) of what the Allams say is lies.

 

My wife's mother, who was a working class heroine, and, from me being aged 17, was also more of a mother to me than my own mother, died at 3am this morning in ward 80 of HRI at the grand old age of 82, we can only hope that she breathed her last breath peacefully and painlessly after suffering cancer of both lungs and bowel.

I loved her, all the family loved her, it puts, for me anyway, all of this name change bollocks into context.

RIP Mum xxx

 

Thanks Lambo

 

Condolences to you and yours, LBIA, but I hope this doesn't mean we are now made to feel insensitive if we keep posting about the name change issue on this thread.

 

Sorry to hear of your loss LBIA, as you say puts many things into context.

 

Aye my condolences mate.

 

My grandad was in hospital recently with pneumonia, and before that he was in there because of bowel complications. He's not as old as your mother-in-law though. At least she lived a long and fulfilling life.

I'm very sorry for your loss.

 

Sorry for your loss LBIA.

 

Condolences to you and your family LBIA. Never an easy time.

 

Looks like it does. Just as I was going to make an unarguable case for backing the Allam's, too. Guess it will have to wait for another thread. Condolences to LBIA.

 

My condolences. The pain eases with time. If you had a great Mum, you were lucky and having her up to the age of 82, that's more than a lot of people get so, in years to come, you should be able to look back and see how blessed you were to have a fab Mum for so long. I try and look at it that way ... and also the fact there comes a time when life isn't the fun it used to be ... everything becomes a struggle ... maybe even painful .... keep talking to her though ... and pay attention to your dreams!

 

Thanks all for the condolences, and Polly if you all want to carry on arguing/debating/slating feel free, it's just me that's decided not to.

 

I'm sorry for your loss lbia x

 

Thanks to everyone who is actually contributing seriously to this debate. I understand the attachment to the Hull City name and if City were in a position to fund themselves at Premier League level as Hull City, I'd argue against changing a successful "brand". Unfortunately thought Hull City's history suggests that without an owner much richer than Dr. Allam, who will not be around forever, especially bearing in mind the element of the fan base making it clear they want him gone, we have to consider life without Dr. Allam and gauge the chances of him being replaced with a better owner or a worse owner ...... as I've made clear, I don't want Hull City to be kicked around any more prey to the likes of Bartlett .... it#s ironic a fans' group was formed to oppose Dr. Allam's running of the club and not Bartlett's .... here's one piece which I think is pretty well thought out ..... it would be nice if this WAS more clear cut ... it's finely balanced but I think what tips the balance in favour of the name-change is the fact it's not worth losing Dr. Allam and then quite possibly Steve Bruce over. Times change. Lots of "traditions" are left behind .... I like the fact Dr. Allam is local. He's stated his aim is to see the club self-sufficient. How many owners have City had who wanted that? Even Adam Pearson is in the business of running sports clubs. I don't see Dr. Allam selling City and then buying Derby or Leeds ... he's interested in City because it's his local club, it was in trouble, seriously broken, he saved the club and now wants to fix it in a way it will stay fixed.

"Hull Tigers – what’s the problem?
About 6 months ago, the chairman of an English football club (Assem Allam at Hull City, enjoying their first season back in the elite Premier League after a brief absence) came up with what seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable suggestion. He wanted to change their name to Hull Tigers – an amalgamation of the club’s long-standing nickname into the actual name proper. The resultant explosion of bile from not only the club’s fanbase but across the whole footballing spectrum left me not only bewildered but thoroughly depressed and, quite frankly, not a little angry. I’m about to explain why.



What’s interesting about this from a personal point of view is that is the side that I used to support. I now stand on the outside looking in having abandoned football a few years ago due to disillusionment with its old-fashioned hierarchical structure, which ensures that fans of clubs like Hull City can only realistically ever aspire to top flight mediocrity. The ins and outs of that stance are really for another piece but my past knowledge of this team and the sport did ensure that – whilst opinion from anywhere on this topic I think can be valued (and, in fact, fresh non-football eyes probably cast extra light on the whole strangeness and unpleasantness of the situation) – my opinion could not be brushed off as that of someone without knowledge of the team, city, pros, cons and general make-up of the whole sorry affair. Whether it matters or not, I am quite well-placed to offer an opinion here.



So here’s my view. I think it’s a good idea. Why? 2 main reasons. Firstly, a ton of English football teams – such are their age – are suffixed with either United, City or Town, dating back to a simpler, more embryonic sporting age when such things didn’t really matter. These names are boring and, obviously, quite indistinct. In fact, tied into the grim hierarchy that I have made mention of, the Manchester clubs are now generally referred to as purely “City” or “United” in a wide National context and have been for at least 10 years (City’s annexing of the word even pre-dating their current billionaire-funded status back when they were a middle-of-the-pack meat and potatoes outfit). If you support any other side called City or United and don’t like that, well, tough. Suck it up. It’s just the way it is. It is thoroughly vile though, of course, and massive ammunition in favour of Allam’s desire to [paraphrasing] “make his team special” (1 of 2 reasons he gave for the name change, the 2nd being to better market them overseas and particularly in the Far East). Secondly, in modern sport – whether we like it or not – branding is important and what made sense in the climate of 1904 (when Hull City FC were founded) doesn’t necessarily best fit the landscape of 2014 (advancements in media being the key point). Hull Tigers is not only more marketable but sounds kinda sexy in a way that Hull City doesn’t. Kids would prefer it also, I think. This is objective to some extent of course but is I think perfectly valid. I certainly can’t see a case for Hull City being more sexy, kid-friendly or marketable. So in a nutshell, this is my stance.



So what were the objections? Was there a lot of well-balanced, measured opinion outlining why – in fact – Hull City was the better name and should stay? That Allam’s thought process was well-meaning but ill-advised? Did Hull City’s fanbase (who of course know the club better than him) fill him in on some crucial factors that he had overlooked? Well, no, quite frankly and this is what irked me the most. The first I saw of this story was on the BBC website a week or so before the start of the current season. Within minutes the piece had exploded into about 300 angry responses, branding the suggestion as “absurd” and “disgusting” (amongst other things). And yet, reading through as many responses as I could whilst on my lunch break at work, I failed to see one that actually explained why. Apparently it just was. I saw a bit of angry Anti-American sport sentiment, as I expected. We were becoming “too American”, it seems. Almost a valid point but not really bursting with content (What does “too American” mean? Why is it bad?) And of course, when you probe for the source of all this ire you meet with 1 word and 1 word only. Tradition. The mooted change is, it seems, a blight on tradition.



Now, I do get this. I am not a traditionalist per se, however I do think tradition has its place. Moreover, though, I like to think that I judge things on their own merits. Some traditions are worth upholding and some are not. For example, I buy most of my music on vinyl – a traditional method, most I think would agree. However, I don’t do this because it’s traditional – I do it because I prefer vinyl records to CDs and digital downloads (and despise Spotify, natch) and only slightly object to paying more for it. Slavery, on the other hand, was traditional once yet I have never been a big fan. Nor was most of the world, thankfully, so it was abolished. The point is simple: whilst traditions are of course often splendid things and in many cases should be fought for at all costs, retaining anything purely for tradition’s sake is not a valid argument. Yet in the absence of any detail to the contrary (for which I am still waiting) this seems to me to be exactly what Hull City’s fanbase hope to achieve here.



There is an irony in the fact that Allam’s suggestion came not long after the Cardiff City chairman’s eccentric decision to change his side’s colours from blue to red. Allam’s timing might not have been great, then, and he was thus easily denounced as another arrogant money man throwing his weight around making bad decisions and stomping on the wants and desires of his fanbase. The irony of this is that Allam is actually the exact opposite of the Cardiff chairman. Because what has he actually done here? He’s seen that his team’s name is indistinct and makes them difficult to market overseas. He’s seen that his team’s nickname is actually really good and very marketable, by contrast, and then put 2 and 2 together to make 4. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, it is intellectually sound and has the club’s best interests (which surely include those of its fans) at heart. It even does incorporate tradition, up to a point (not that I consider this especially crucial here but this point has been missed; it’s not as though he plucked the name Tigers from thin air). It is at least partly a business decision and I know that none of us as sports fans truly embrace business decisions. But if you do not accept that football is now a big business then you need to head for the park fields and watch hungover blokes kicking lumps out of each other. This is not a debate for you.



Now – what has the Cardiff chairman, for his part, done? He’s looked at English football (his side are Welsh, of course, but play within the English structure) and noticed that its most successful sides (presumably Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, maybe Nottingham Forest if you want to wind back further) all wore and wear red. So he has decided that his own team – who previously wore blue – should do likewise. This is clearly crackpot stuff and serves no-one’s interests. All you can really do with this decision is antagonise your fanbase. There are palpably no benefits. But Allam’s suggestion clearly does bring with it benefits. For one thing, with the name changed accordingly no national TV or radio commentator can insult the Hull team and its supporters by referring to Manchester City as “City” when playing at Hull’s own stadium (as they did this Saturday just gone). These 2 issues are thus apples and pears. Tigers and Bluebirds. Not even the same ballpark. [Throw in your own sporting metaphor]



There is so much hypocrisy in these whole angry outpourings that I honestly don’t know where to start. A few attempts though. For one thing, English football fans are very selective in where they choose to view their tradition. Were Hull City’s fans, for example, equally angry when Allam bailed them out from possible liquidation following the previous chairman’s folly (and alleged at the time criminal activity)? How about when he subsequently littered the side with calibre EPL (albeit mid-table calibre but then this is a mid-table glass ceiling outfit) players not long after and took them up a division to where they are now? No? Funny, because these are not as I understand them “traditional” acts. Furthermore, I know from my own previous love of football as a nipper and even well into my 30s that generally speaking the team names we love best as a nation are those that are unique, distinct and, yes, traditional. Nottingham Forest (again). Aston Villa. Sheffield Wednesday (!). Crewe Alexandra. So are these great names because they are great names or simply because they’ve been around for so long? Do they need to have both? I can see why it would help but surely a great team name can be exactly that if conjured up in 2014 just as well as if done so in 1904. Because here’s the tragedy of this situation: no matter how lazy, dull and uninspired the creator of Hull City’s name was, we must apparently keep it for all time because it dates back to 1904 (a blink of an eye, really – a new name could last 5000 years until the next ice age wipes us all out and in that context Allam be viewed as a visionary) and how thoroughly depressing is that? Are we not in control of our destinies and fully cognisant human beings able to assess what works best in the here and now and act accordingly? Well, if you’re a die-hard football fan….a “proper” Bovril drinking, opposition baiting, angry, unreasonable tradition-upholding football fan then apparently not. Oh well.



This leads me into the overwhelming reason why I don’t think that on traditional grounds alone any objector can win this argument. It requires a theoretical scenario, which is this: in 1904 when naming the new Hull football side, the person in question had imagination, wit and an eye for presentation. Rather than just copying a bunch of other sides (Stoke at the very least were around then and I’m sure some other Citys) he named the side Hull Tigers, which fitted neatly alongside the list of revered names a paragraph or so above. It lasted well into the 21st Century when a wealthy chairman (let’s call him Assem Allam) decided – in a fit of Cardiff-esque weird pique – that the name be changed to Hull City because, in his words, he “wanted them to be more like Manchester City” (the top flight’s current benchmark side). Now, ask yourself on which side of the argument the real world objectors would stand. I would place a pound to a penny that they would all react with the same outrage and horror that they do now in the name of tradition. And yet – perversely – in this scenario they would be right. And I would be amongst their number. Not because the tradition of Hull Tigers must be preserved per se (although it would be a powerful ingredient in the argument, for sure) but because the mooted name change was fundamentally a backward step and serves no tangible, scientific, fun or business purpose.



I therefore make the case that Allam’s decision and my defence of it holds considerably more substance than the opposing view. Is there a defence of the retention of Hull City that genuinely holds substance on some grounds? I can’t think of it personally and will naturally argue that my case is the stronger either way. However, what was more troubling for me than the ultimate decision in this case (the outcome of which is yet to be determined, of course) was that the argument for the opposition really – in all seriousness – never even started. If it succeeds, as it well might, it will be for my money the most hollow and unpleasant victory in the modern sport fan era and Allam (a proud Hull resident who loves the city that earned him his fortune, lest we forget) very, very hard done by. Allam is furthermore a proud man who may walk away from the team and even sport as a result. Hull’s fans might then find themselves asking each other in 10 years time, as they face Tranmere in League One, whether this whole thing with hindsight was really worth all of the bitterness and acrimony and who (if anyone) actually won out. Hull Tigers pushing around the top 7 of the EPL with a loose-pursed benefactor at the helm or good old Hull City run by some modest local consortium taking their inevitable turn scraping around the bottom end of the 4 divisions? That may well be the stark choice they face here.



“You’re not City anymore” is apparently a taunt that has been doing the rounds from opposition fans visiting The KC. It’s really the most empty of taunts, being sung as it will in the main by supporters of equally generically named teams doing nothing more than celebrating their own bland conformity. Because maybe Hull never should have been City in the first place. And maybe – just maybe – they can actually be something that little bit better if they put their minds to it. Or, in this case, just follow their leader. He’s actually quite smart and they might just have the last laugh.



Furthermore, is someone else’s face really worth cutting your own nose off for?"

 

too long didnt read?