HCST Statement – Supporters’ Committee Meetings
Hull City Supporters’ Trust wishes to place on record our extreme disappointment at the cancellation of last night’s Supporters’ Committee meeting.
Mr Allam cited an article in the Hull Daily Mail as his reason for calling off the meeting, claiming that he could not operate under a “thinly veiled threat of further disruptive action” by HCST. The article in question can be found
here. We do not accept this as a valid reason to cancel a meeting which people had given up their own time to attend. If you read the article it is absolutely clear no threat is made by HCST. Just an observation that after over four years of bad relations between the owners and supporters and two meetings that have yet to provide any progress, if there were to be no tangible improvements then it was conceivable protests could start again. That is reality.
We would like to remind Mr Allam that these extraordinary meetings of the Supporters’ Committee were arranged by him in order to try and reach an amnesty and put a stop to protests. We presented Mr Allam with a detailed proposal on how concession tickets could be re-implemented easily and at no cost to the club, but we are yet to hear any feedback on this. Similarly we also presented Mr Allam with an alternative version of the current naming guidelines used by the club. The only changes we made were to never use Hull City Tigers or Hull Tigers and to instead use Hull City. Again, we are yet to hear a response.
Guideline 111 sent by the EFL to all member clubs in April 2017 details how Clubs should conduct supporters meetings or forums. HCST sought clarity on how the Supporters Committee should be structured in future and requested the club follow these guidelines to the letter. We await feedback from Mr Allam on this also. Hard copies of the Guidelines were distributed to Supporters Committee members before participants left on Wednesday 7th February
As always, HCST is willing to engage with any owners of Hull City AFC where there is a genuine desire to come to an agreement acceptable to all concerned. We believe Mr Allam’s actions will only result in exactly what he purported to avoid and strongly urge him to meet again with fans as soon as possible.
