Wembley

From Boothferry to Wembley

We'll keep the Hull flag flying high!

Elton John! Johnny Barnes! Joy Batchelor! Graham Taylor! Michael Bentine! Luther Blissett! We gave your lads a helluva beating!

May 14th 2008 - Hull City 4 Watford 1 - and we are on our way to Wembley for the first time in our rather unremarkable history. Victory at Wembley will take us to the top flight for the very first time and if we get there, when we get there, it will for me be the fulfilment of a boyhood dream - one that I never really expected to come true.

For I have travelled countless miles to support The Tigers - shivered at Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Belle Vue in Doncaster, got pissed on as I pissed in the stinking nineteenth century urinals at Chesterfield, witnessed so many false dawns as our team hovered up and down in the lower leagues. From Shrewsbury to Huddersfield and from Wimbledon to Port Vale I suffered, gristle pie after polystyrene Bovril, from Stoke to Derby, Tottenham to York City, Bournemouth, Peterborough, Ayresome Park, Burnden Park, Bradford City, Leeds, Bramall Lane, Hillsborough, Rotherham's canyon of death, Spotland in Rochdale and once in the "theatre of dreams"where they only opened one turnstile to ensure we missed the first ten minutes of a match in which United crushed us 5-0. The real footballing world has been my oyster for forty five years - no jet black Porsches or silver Mercedes, no exotically named French Africans or Serbs, just The Tigers rising and falling like the sea as the years passed and hope of reaching the promised land seemed to disappear like boats in the grey Humber rain.

All that lies between us and paradise now is Bristol and our fear. Please wish us well. I will be there at Wembley in my tiger stripe underpants, roaring the lads on. Who are ye? Who are ye? We are Ull! We are Ull! We are Ull! It's only football but if feels like life itself.