CTWD Newsletter #7: Hello to our normal subscribers and welcome to the many of you who have joined us recently as paid-up members of CTWD. This is our regular newsletter from the CTWD group where we aim to bring you the latest news and updates from the No To Hull Tigers campaign. City Till We Die continues to spark national and international media interest, with club ownership further highlighted by the exploits of a certain high-waistlined Chairman in South Wales. Indeed, since our previous newsletter the CTWD campaign has gone from strength to strength, and we’ve hardly had a chance to catch our breath! Obviously the biggest news was the announcement that Dr Allam has now submitted his application to the FA to change our historic name from Hull City AFC to Hull Tigers FC. This was sadly inevitable, though we are pleased that the application has been submitted well before the FA’s April deadline which gives all stakeholders an opportunity to plan and submit their detailed responses. You may have already read that CTWD have been asked to contribute to the FA’s formal consultation exercise. This is fantastic news and testament to the hard work from all our volunteers but most of all the support from you – the fans. We are currently pulling together our response material for submission to the FA in January - and then for personal presentation at Wembley in February – but in the meantime you can all help by writing to the FA (at both national and local levels) to demonstrate the widespread opposition to the name change; we’ve included useful FA contact details at the bottom of this email. Let the FA know who you are and what you say! Please also send us suggestions that CTWD could maybe include in our formal response – you’ve all been so passionate and articulate so far and we just know you’ll have some great ideas for us. We want to make our presentation as professional and powerful as possible – please help us to do this! On Saturday 14th December we opened our doors for the very first CTWD open public meeting. Anyone who was there will know the Tigers Lair was absolutely bursting at the seams – and not just from film crews and journalists! We were lucky enough to have some great bands Vinny Whitehead and Cuba Drive entertaining the Tiger Nation, plus guest speakers Mark Herman and Malcolm Clarke. As you’ll be aware Mark is an internationally-renowned and City-supporting Film Director (his credits include Brassed Off, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and best of all – See You At Wembley Frankie Walsh). His passionate speech can be read here. Malcolm Clark from the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) explained the formal process the FA will now follow before deciding whether to accept Dr Allam’s name change application. December also saw the formal launch of our CTWD membership scheme – with over 1,400 fans joining in the first few weeks. We knew you all loved badges and scarves – now we realise there’s a lot of love for our CTWD wristbands too! Tommy Palmer has the distinction of being member #1. Please encourage as many people as you can to join us – it’s only £2 and it gets you a numbered membership card and wristband (gnome not included!). The more people that sign up mean the greater mandate we have when we speak to the FA on behalf of Hull City fans. If anyone is still waiting for their membership pack to arrive, it should be there early in the New Year, and we thank you for your patience. We’re also thankful for the support that we’ve received from fans of other clubs – with some fantastic emails and social media messages received from all over the world. We were particularly impressed by the support from fans of German side FC Ingolstadt 04 plus nice endorsements from Didi Hamman, Dave Hemingway and one Hairy Biker. CTWD are not just striving to preserve our historic name of Hull City AFC – we also want to formally amend actual FA Laws preventing other owners from attempting to follow future similar trashing of fans’ heritage. In the press and media it’s been another manic month. Writing in The Telegraph, Jim White savaged Dr Allam’s “act of vandalism”: “The most simple of marketing rules in football that the first priority is to nurture what you have. And then build from there. What matters are the people who clack through the turnstiles every fortnight, not those based 5,000 miles away who might occasionally tune in to television coverage. In football the local is all.” Read the full article for quotes and links, here: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/14325d88fdff0123
