FACT: The Tigers have taken on 90 different teams in competitive games at the KC Stadium. We’ve also entertained the likes of Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hearts, Osasuna and Royal Antwerp in pre-season friendlies.
QUIZ: Can
you name the 11 current members of the football league who haven’t played at
the KC yet?
Top 10 Players - #6
Nick Barmby
Everyone
knows all about Nick Barmby. He’s the best footballer to be born in Hull in the last 50 years
and arguably ever. He went off to Lilleshall (the St. George’s Park
of the day) and signed for Tottenham Hotspur. He’d move on to Middlesbrough (£5.25m),
Everton (£5.25m) and, somewhat acrimoniously, Liverpool (£6m), picking up 23
England caps, going to two European Championships, scoring the first goal of
Sven Goran Eriksson’s England reign and playing in the 5-1 win in Germany in 2001.
By 2004, he
was finished. Leeds United had paid £2.75m for him 2 years earlier, a deal
which cost them over £100k per game and £500k per goal from the transfer fee
alone, and he’d been on loan at Nottingham Forest while Leeds were slipping out
of the top flight. Chortle. That summer Barmby took a pay-off from Leeds
United, said goodbye to the Premier League and the public gaze and got himself
set for retirement by joining his hometown club, fresh out of Division 3, on a
free transfer.
He enjoyed
a fine season with The Tigers though Peter Taylor handled him with kid gloves, often
replacing him around the hour mark with the job done. Barmby started 38 games
and chipped in with 9 goals including the fastest goal in the clubs history (7
seconds) against Walsall in November and a memorable double at Hillsborough in
December as The Tigers won 4-2 at Sheffield
Wednesday on a night we’ll never forget. It was a season that ended in a second
successive promotion and took Barmby a step closer to the level he’d played at
for almost his entire career. He’d never make it back to that level of course,
not even the most ardent Hull
City fan had dreams that ridiculous.
The next
two seasons in the Championship were frustrating for Barmby. Both heavily hit
by injuries and the second compounded by a sour relationship with manager Phil
Parkinson. He still managed to bag another double at Hillsborough to seal a 2-1
win, the third season in a row he’d scored there (Quick quiz: Against which
other team did Nick score 3 seasons in a row between 05/06 and 07/08?) and he
bagged a late equaliser at Stoke which kept The Tigers afloat in the
Championship. He was over-shadowed at times by Dean Windass but had a knack of
scoring in crucial games.
The 2007/08
season, our best ever, is well documented. Unfortunately for Barmby, he missed
two massive chunks of it between September and December and then February and
April. He returned for the business end of the season, scored in both legs of
the play-off semi-final and then played 70 minutes at Wembley in the blazing
heat as The Tigers secured promotion to the Premier League. 4 years after he
was finished, Barmby was a top division player again. He played in 18 league
games that season, City lost only 3 (and he was sub in two of them!) As was the
case for most of his 8 years at the KC Stadium, we were a better team with
Barmby involved.
Unfortunately,
injury cost him the chance to be involved in many of the Tigers real glory days
in the Premier League. He did clock up nearly 50 appearances in the two
top-flight seasons though, more than anyone could ever have predicted. The last two years of Barmby's City career were full of upheaval. Firstly he saw the entire squad ripped to bits following relegation and then watched Nigel Pearson try to rebuild it in the wake of the Allam's takeover. Barmby had a good season himself in 2010/11, scoring 7 goals and being Nigel Pearson's go-to guy whenever a game needed changing. Even into 2011/12, at the age of 37, Pearson continued to call on him to add a bit of experience and quality to his exciting, young side. In November 2012, he took over as caretaker manager following Pearson's departure, later taking the role permanently and hanging up his boots. That meant that his last game for the Tigers was as a substitute in a 2-1 home win against Cardiff, a game in which he fittingly scored the winning goal. Barmby made a good fist of managing the team and put his faith in his young players and the way he wanted them to play football. Sadly, we missed having a plan B at times. Barmby himself would have been ideal. He was sacked in the summer for disagreeing with the clubs owners which prompted outrage from many City fans, so high is that regard in which he's held.
Nick Barmby came home in 2004. Most people thought he was here to play out his last couple of seasons in the comfort of League One. Most people don't know Nick Barmby. He's a winner. He's demanding of himself and everyone around him. He won't let his or anyone else's standards slip. He helped drag the club, kicking and screaming, from it's lifetime of mediocrity into the big time. He's a big game player. Whenever the pressure was on, whenever the stakes high, Nick puffed out his chest and took on the challenge. If not for the injuries restricting his appearances in several seasons, he'd be much further up this list. He served Hull City with pride as player, coach and manager and his "couple of years" turned into 8 mostly wonderful ones. City are flying high at the moment and Steve Bruce is doing a wonderful job. But I'll still be forever sorry that we didn't get to see Nick Barmby lead the club his way.
Nick Barmby came home in 2004. Most people thought he was here to play out his last couple of seasons in the comfort of League One. Most people don't know Nick Barmby. He's a winner. He's demanding of himself and everyone around him. He won't let his or anyone else's standards slip. He helped drag the club, kicking and screaming, from it's lifetime of mediocrity into the big time. He's a big game player. Whenever the pressure was on, whenever the stakes high, Nick puffed out his chest and took on the challenge. If not for the injuries restricting his appearances in several seasons, he'd be much further up this list. He served Hull City with pride as player, coach and manager and his "couple of years" turned into 8 mostly wonderful ones. City are flying high at the moment and Steve Bruce is doing a wonderful job. But I'll still be forever sorry that we didn't get to see Nick Barmby lead the club his way.
Top 10 Matches - #6
Hull City 4 Darlington 1 - 09/08/2003
Opening
days don’t come much better than this one. Peter Taylor’s side began the season
as one of the promotion favourites, a tag they hadn’t coped well with in either
of the previous two seasons. It was to be the first full season in the KC
Stadium and on a roasting first day of the season, Darlington
came to town. 9 months earlier, they were the party poopers who ruined the last
ever game at Boothferry
Park. This would be our
day.
Four of Taylor’s five summer
recruits started the game with Andy Dawson missing out through injury. Right
back Alton Thelwell, jack-of-all-trades Richard Hinds, winger Jason Price and
Danny Allsopp, signed to form a strike partnership with the deadline busting buy
from the previous season Ben Burgess, were all included. The only negatives on
the day were the inclusion of Taylor’s
buddy Marc Joseph ahead of club legend Justin Whittle and the slightly
disappointing crowd of 14,675. It was still a terrific bottom division turnout
but down on some of the gates the previous season.
Jason Price
was the star turn on the day having a hand in several of the goals and forcing two
good saves from Andy Collett in the first half. Midway through the half, the
home crowd had something to cheer about as Ben Burgess met Joseph's header from a corner,
Collett saved his header and Burgess snaffled up the rebound. We were lifting
off. But not just yet. With the Tigers struggling to maintain the tempo in the
heat, Darlo came back into the game. Barry Conlon should have equalised but
shot straight at Fettis before the same player finished well from 10 yards sending
the teams in level.
The Tigers
came out with a roar in the second half and banged in two in two minutes to
kill the game off. Price struck a deserved goal amidst chaos in the Darlo area
before turning provider again, flicking the ball on for Thelwell to race into
the area and thump a terrific volley into the far corner. It could easily have
been 6 or 7 after that with City playing some easy on the eye football that we’d
craved for years. In the end, we settled for four with Danny Allsopp hitting a
third debut goal of the afternoon. His shot from 20 yards into the far corner of the
net was a real crowning moment.
It would
have been just like Hull
City to promise much and
deliver little but this side were an exception. They fulfilled all of the
promise they showed on that August afternoon and were promoted, the clubs first
move up the league ladder for 19 years.
Dean Windass (Hull City 1 Sheffield Wednesday 0 - 30/12/2007)
This is a
forgotten gem, I think. Great free-kicks have been few and far between at the
KC Stadium (though we’ve seen a few corkers on the road) and this is by far the
best. It settled a local derby and earned a win that would be crucial come May though
we didn’t really know it at the time.
10 Biggest names
to grace the KC Stadium
1. Fernando Torres
2. Xabi Alonso
3. Robin Van
Persie
4. Michael
Ballack
5. Didier
Drogba
6. Carlos
Tevez
7. Steven
Gerrard
8. Ryan Giggs
9. Robinho
10. Jan
Venegoor Of Hesslink
QUIZ ANSWER (SPOILERS AHEAD!):
Accrington Stanley, AFC Wimbledon, Aldershot Town, Barnet, Burton Albion, Dagenham & Redbridge, Fleetwood Town, Gillingham, Notts County, Stevenage, Wycombe Wanderers
Quick quiz answer: Watford
What about Ronaldo?
ReplyDeleteHe didn't play. United sent a reserve team the first season and then sold him in the summer.
ReplyDelete