So here it is the first Chapter of my life as an FC fan serialised as promised on a weekly basis, as I said last week it’s a bit social history-ish at first, as it’s hard to get to games when you’re in your nappies! However, most of the big FC games and seasons are in there and if you fancy a read bear with me. It’s not ideal and I know many of you will have already read it and won’t feeI much like reading it again. But, its better, I think, with all the doom and gloom and anxiety around our lives and our game at present to look back at more simpler times when perhaps we didn’t know just  how lucky we were. I hope you find something to enjoy! 

So back to those less stressful times!

Try to stay safe everyone!

Pete  

Worrying times, No Rugby and a Bleak Future for our Game!

So, the day arrived that perhaps all rugby league fans had dreaded but yet expected, when last Monday all fixtures were suspended, as this crazy situation we find ourselves in, moves from worrying to serious. Of course, the weekly rounds had to be scrapped, because these are dangerous times and we have to do everything we can to protect the staff, players and supporters of our great game. 

However, it was still almost surreal to see all national sport on hold and financially there are certainly some big implications for the Clubs, their owners and their players. It’s hard really in here to know just what to talk about this week, but I’ve had a go below and I hope that you find something of interest!

RADFORD’S OUT!!

Words failed me about that performance and I bet they did for you too! 

But the drama that followed for those watching at home, when a chairman actually came out on the pitch and announced he had parted company with his Coach a few minutes earlier and did it, on live TV, was quite unheard of! 

It was certainly another night of drama on Thursday and just like the best Agatha Christie who-done-it, it was predictable all the way through until the final twist took us all by surprise.

He might have been the Bookmakers number One choice for the chop, but make no mistake about it, Lee will go down in the annals of Hull FC as one of the most memorable Coaches we have had. I say that simply because he took us to the Holy Grail on that wonderful summer afternoon in London, when all our dreams came true. Those memories will last forever and for me there should be a statue dedicated to him for that! However, although it’s all very sad, as with the end of the great Arthur Bunting, it just had to be done, his reign had run its course, Adams patience had run out and the fans had stomached enough, for it was all too cosy, as once out on the pitch, the players appeared to be just doing as they liked!!

That drama all followed what can only be described as a poor excuse for a performance. If that was the last game we were to witness at the KCom as fans, for a while, then it was one that could best be described as totally unmemorable and a match with too many ego’s on display and not enough passion and attitude.

Yet as FC fans, at these times when such scary problems surround us and our families, we just needed something to cling onto and to remember, something to at least raise our spirits for a short time, but we all got was more disappointment, more disenchantment and more frustration.  

SNEEEYYYYYYDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!

In the end it was all hail ‘The Iceman’ who is the pulse of our team and yet the one that some fans were (quite unreasonably I believe) having a real go at just 5 days ago. Ice cool Marc continue his amazing Golden Point record and he did it on the back of a smart Jones play and an Albert Kelly wonder break, (wonder indeed, from a man who looked absolutely knackered in that last 10 minutes). Those plays manufactured the position from where Sneydy, organising the set-piece brilliantly, dropped a superb 40-yard goal. 

It’s never easy to go to Wakey, particularly on a Friday night as over the years, under the lights, they have saved some of their best performances for games like this one. What’s more, after the last few matches, there is little doubt that everyone who travelled did so in hope rather than expectation. At least both teams had the same short 5 day turn around to manage and the ‘Cow Pat’ pitch (as Lee Radford probably ill-advisedly described it) had dried out somewhat, but there were still no doubt a lot of souls on the terraces who were still smarting from that second half capitulation at the KCom last Sunday. 

In the end the loyal FC supporters witnessed a roller coaster of a game, with an almost perfectly controlled first half, an injury and penalty littered shambles of a second half and for the third time since it was introduced a brilliantly executed Golden Point drop goal. It got us the two points we so desperately needed and there is at present a lot of relief around the place. However, there’s a lot to do as well. We did well to hang on in the end when a missed conversion kept us in the game, but we should have had it won long before that. 

However, injury disruption, the loss of Ma’u with concussion, some stupid penalties conceded and an FC line in disarray at time, meant it was real heart in your mouth stuff. Wakey will beat a lot of teams at home this year, but we scrapped and scrapped and just sneaked the points at the death. And, at times like these, a win is all that matters.   

Well, safe to say that was heart-breaking!

After a capitulation that was as bad as I have seen at home for a long time, we walked out of the ground in silence and followed a couple, obviously not season ticket holders, who I over-heard saying, “They can’t expect us to come again when they play like that” and really you couldn’t argue with their logic. It summed it up completely and the club has to realise how such a reversal effects the supporters, for it was soul destroying for even the hardiest of fans wasn’t it? 

Even vice-captain Scott Taylor described it as, ‘A disgraceful and criminal collapse’ and who can really argue with him, but, what about, ‘the importance of winning our home games’ and what about ‘Fortress KCom’? With just two home wins in the last 8  …..it’s hardly that is it! 

I knew it was a season that, with so many new faces, we would have to build into. So, I was surprised when it started with a great performance against Leeds, before we managed to scramble our way over and past a resolute and scrapping Hull KR, folded in the second half against Saints, couldn’t match the tenacity and resolve of Wigan in the same period and then witnessed a complete collapsed against Catalan, again in the second half. Two things stand out for me from that record a) We are going backwards and b) we simply can’t seem to break the momentum of a team that gets moving in the second half. Yesterday we looked really good at times and incredibly poor at others. Again, we had issues with missing players and injuries, but again, our fringe players didn’t come up to the mark.

That performance, for a Club that has invested heavily, been really supported by the fans, (often against their better judgement) and set their stall out pre-season to be competing at the top of the table, was pretty unacceptable. Writing this as I am straight after the game, I am, even after all these years, really depressed, by what I saw this afternoon.