Welcome To The Wonderful World Of Mass Media

The life of a Hull City fan, until now of course, has been one of desperately trying to remember to watch “The Championship” on a Sunday morning. It seems to be on at a different time every week, you generally have to sit through interminable coverage of Queens Park Rangers, Sheffield Wednesday or Crystal Palace before you get to the good stuff, and then when they finally show the Hull City coverage, you typically get five seconds of footage featuring two goals, one penalty appeal and a fat bloke in the crowd with no shirt on and a chest tattoo which says “Mam” in a faux-medieval typeface. All of which is hardly worth challenging your Sunday morning hangover and crawling out of bed for.

If you forget to watch “The Championship” (and you always do) and you haven’t seen the weekend’s goals (assuming there were any) then it’s either tough luck, or you can resort to trawling YouTube until you find clips of the match which someone captured on their brand new Nokia whilst jumping up and down and screaming “YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!” into the microphone so loudly that you have to dive for the volume control before your PC speakers blow up.

Of course, you can leave Sky Sports News on until they show the goals, but you’ll probably have to wait a number of hours, during which time you’ll have seen Cristiano Ronaldo celebrating his seventy-ninth goal of the season with that nauseating, smug look on his eminently slappable face, approximately twenty-seven times. You’ll be so fed up with it that you’ll eventually switch the TV off in a fit of pique – immediately after which, they will of course show the Hull City goal(s), but you won’t know because you’ll be too busy swearing and looking for a picture of The Most Hated Footballer On The Planet to stick on your dartboard. Anything to quieten the voices in your head…

None of this is easy to bear, but it’s the life of a supporter of every club outside the top flight. However, in our case, all of that is about to change. Now? Well, now, we’re spoilt for choice.

Firstly of course, we have now made the stage of a great British institution – Match Of The Day. Yep, that’s right, we’ll be on there every week (well, whenever Rupert Murdoch hasn’t moved the game of course). Great stuff. I can’t wait for Gary Lineker to start waxing lyrical about “Premier League new boys Hull City” (for that is now officially the name of our club). Brilliant isn’t it? Sure, I know we’ve been on there before, but only when we’ve been unfortunate enough to draw a “big club” in the Cup. And that’s hardly the same as being bona fide members of the Premier League disco, with an automatic right to have our style of play deftly dissected by Mark Lawrenson et al. The anticipation is almost too much to bear.

Besides Match Of The Day, there’s “Football First”, which if I understand it correctly is something on Sky Sports on weekend evenings whereby you press the red button and magically get extended highlights of the match of your choice. Now, having never, ever supported a Premier League team until now, Football First was news to me. It was explained to me by a work colleague, who I’m sure must have felt like he was Prometheus, giving fire to man. My eyes were wide, my mouth open at the thought of a whole hour of highlights of the mighty Hull City. Could it be possible? This month’s Sky magazine assures me it is no joke – it really exists. Wow. That’s technology for you.

We had something of a romance with Sky last year anyway. As the season neared its close, they screened our match with Ipswich, though unfortunately that turned out to be a match of such spectacular awfulness that I almost took legal action against all concerned, on the grounds that I lost the will to live around halfway through. I will never get those 90 minutes of my life back – never. However all was redeemed with the two play-off semi finals against Watford, which were occasions of sheer wonder. Arrogantly deciding to save my money for Wembley (even though we weren’t there yet) I attended neither game, choosing instead to watch both on TV, though the amount spent on beer across those two matches would probably have funded a private jet to Watford for the away leg and an overnight stay at the Hilton afterwards… but such is life.

This year’s Sky fixtures are so far rather under-whelming for us. The only one announced so far is the home game with Manchester City, whilst over on Setanta they’re screening the Arsenal away game. This latter match is a real treat, as tickets will be like rocking horse droppings, so Setanta – thanks for that.

Added to all of this is the fact that we will now have more than a two-inch write up in the sports pages – we’re big time now, kids. We’ll be in the national press and by the time we get to September or thereabouts, they may even (we hope) have stopped harking back to the now-dead record of being the largest city in Britain/Europe/The Cosmos never to have had a top-flight football team.

Bring it on. No more fuzzy Sundays in front of The Championship – it’s MOTD and Football First all the way from hereon in. Even YouTube will have proper videos instead of grainy mobile phone clips.

I can’t wait.

Nick Boldock

Comments

[Robert Balmain]

Gosh! Do people still watch MOTD? Why?

[Jim]

If they did us all a favour and shortened MOTD by a minute or so, we wouldn't have to see B Rovers at all !

[Tracey]

"like he was Prometheus, giving fire to man"

You can't be from Hull with that sort of poncey talk.

Angling after the Adrian Chiles gig?

[David]

Being on MoTD for a club your size is more an annoyance than a godsend. It's hardly any better than watching your goals on The Championship given the timeslot and the fact that you won't be shown unless something incredible happens (as said already). On the other hand, you'll LOVE "Football First" on Sky.

[Tom S]

Good shout about youtube and the Championship, could also have mentioned how the Sky Sports News presenters announce the League One and Two goals are 'coming up' before an ad break, only for them still not to have arrived three breaks later!

[Dabooka]

You'll get good coverage on MOTD provided you either a) Have a giant killer of a game and beat one of the big 4; or b) Get publicly humiliated by one f the big 4 (a la Man U vs NUFC last year, I'm still shivering now).

I hope you're featured for the former, good luck!

[Jonathan]

Sorry mate, but one minute or more likely less after midnight on MOTD after they have ALWAYS showed the Big Bore in detail is hardly a massive improvement in coverage. Unless you are playing one of the big bore of course in which case you can see extended highlights early on of your most likely beating. If you think MOTD won't continue with their usual bias you aren't just naive, you're a wally. I'm expecting no change this year - boing, boing!

[DazzaS]

I am as excited as Billy Bunter in a cake factory to also be watching 'Ull get knocked and ripped apart by the great and good of punditry in the big time.

[Tim]

brilliant stuff, mate. I hope you do well in the coming season. It's said though, we won't see Okocha again

[James]

Good on you for the unbridled excitement.

As a Derby fan, I'm just looking forward to being able to watch MOTD again as a neutral this season, without having to wait up until midnight for the 2 minutes of highlights (all goals against) and some condescending comments from 'Smugness Personified Inc' AKA Lineker and Hanson.

Enjoy the ride and hope you make a better fist of it than we did (you really can't do any worse)!!!!!

[Stuart]

Mate, completely understand your excitement. Lap it up and enjoy it - every football fan should get to experience those feelings at least once in their lives.

[bill paxton]

I remember when it was like that for all teams even the league leaders.

Hoping your team was the one they showed highlights of on match of the day or the big match whilst at the same time hoping that Brian Moore wasn't commentating.

Now I sound old but I'm only in my early thirties. I miss those days.

[Catherine]

But don't worry, you won't be the very last clip on the show - except for the two games against Blackburn Rovers, that is!

[Tom]

Haha - brilliant post, I know exactly what you mean about dashing out of bed on a Sunday morning for those 10 second highlights!! (And unfortunately, the youtube trawling too!)

[Ronnie]

Trust me, as a Fulham fan, you have no need to be excited about being on match of the day. Unless you play any of the big 4 you will get less airtime than you did on a sunday morning.