A non-too complimentary analysis of the City vocal support both home and away, by Ian Thomson
I’ve been mulling over doing a piece along these lines for TE for some time now. The seed was planted during the second half of the 3-0 defeat at Birmingham in 2018 as the Jackson Irvine song was being sung repeatedly by hordes of kids who had decided to storm towards the front from their perch at the back, crowd the gangways and just generally make a bleak afternoon even more miserable. Two things finally persuaded me that my hour had come. Firstly, observing and listening to the Plymouth supporters during the ill-fated last game of the season at Home Park. Secondly, the enthusiasm with which your editor – whom I have always rightly regarded as a more tolerant, measured individual than myself – responded to my suggestion of writing it, to the point of chipping in a list of examples for me to consider including.
So, you might be asking, what’s this all going to be about? Basically, it’s going to be a non-too complimentary analysis of the City vocal support both home and away: the lack of originality, the uninspiringness, the mean-spirited, the gratuitously offensive and the misogynistic, the lazy copying of other teams’ offerings and the general lack of passion, especially when things on the field are not going our way.
I know none of it will do any good but the purpose is not to bring about change (in any event, that word now carries too many unwholesome political undertones), but rather just to express a point of view and see what you think. Am I right, or just a curmudgeonly old bastard?
My basic premise is this. For the overwhelming majority of regular attendees at football matches, the noise of the crowd is an important element of the day: a feisty atmosphere – especially when your team’s support is playing its part in creating it – thoroughly enhances the matchday experience, whether because of the intensity and continuity of the noise, the originality of the singing and chanting or a combination of those things. Fervent, vociferous backing, especially in terms readily identifiable with one’s own team, can instil heart and encouragement into a team and even cow the opposition. Unfortunately, I think it’s very hard to conclude that passionate support is something at which Hull City supporters are, relative to the opposition, generally speaking all that brilliant, and the gap between us and the opposition, if recent observations are anything to go by, is on the whole widening, the recent impressive swelling of numbers at home games in particular notwithstanding.
Before going any further, it’s essential to emphasise that this is very much a general observation: without any doubt whatsoever, the City support has on many occasions got it very right over the years and continues to do so on occasion. Anyone who was at the home leg of the play-off semi against Watford must surely still tingle at the mere mention of that game. “Mauled by the Tigers” is one of the finest football chants ever, not least on account of the rage it provokes over in Whiteshiteland when we sing it to their fans (and coined, in both lyrics and actions, by two veteran HCSS members, for those of you who didn’t know). That rousing chorus of “Appleton’s Black and Amber Army” that went on for close to half an hour – including the entire half-time interval – and threatened to lift the roof off the Moys End at Peterborough in 1983, only being interrupted by the wild celebrations when Sir Les gave us the lead early in the second half. The brilliant “Calm down, calm down”, complete with Harry Enfieldesque hand gestures, directed at the Anfield crowd during the League Cup game there in 1999. And so many other memorable examples which still either bring a smile to the lips or the set the pulse racing just that smidgeon faster.
But it has to be accepted, surely, that, whereas for many of our rivals these experiences are commonplace if not a weekly phenomenon, at City, once allegedly famed for the “Boothferry Roar”, occasions such as these tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
So, back to Plymouth. Anyone who was there and listening cannot fail to have been struck by the passion and intensity of the Argyle support. The stage was set, furthermore, even before the game started. I know I bang on about this, but the playing of “Semper Fidelis” – a proper rousing military march – when the teams take the field at Home Park is simply magnificent, and it’s followed immediately by “The Janners Song” – a bit plodding, a bit Barry McGuire meets Wurzels tribute band (sorry, I know the Wurzels hail from North Somerset but don’t know a comparable Devon band), but loud, raucous and sung with great gusto by the home crowd (and a quick trip onto YouTube will verify that that’s the norm there, not just when their survival is on the line). It set the pattern for the afternoon. But not only that: it’s original, or at least unique to Plymouth. It’s theirs.
There was some attempt about ten years ago on City message boards to adopt a song that the whole City crowd could bellow out before home games, and as I recall there were two main contenders: “Caravan of Love” and the Watersons’ “Three-Day Millionaire”. Neither came to pass: both had impeccable Hull credentials although the latter might have suffered from being associated more with West Hull than East, which might have sparked a spot of reluctance, in addition to which it suffered from attempts by some well-meaning City fans to rewrite the lyrics in order to render them more City-specific (one in particular from a well-known City romantic (not an HCSS member but known to the regulars, if you ‘aven’t ‘eard) suggested changing the last line to “I couldn’t give a bugger, I’m a City fan”, totally oblivious of the fact that it didn’t scan). That, and the confusion that multiple verses would have wrought, probably correctly discounted “Three-Day Millionaire”, but “Caravan of Love” would have been ideal.
Instead, what have we got? “Can’t Help Falling in Love” – a bloody Sunderland song (Yes. It. Is) and a throwback to the days of the 1970s when everyone copied everyone else’s songs, exemplified by literally everyone except Everton singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and reaching its nadir in about 1974 when Swindon fans could clearly be heard on the box singing “Haway the Lads”. Not quite as preposterous as the purloining by the Blunts of Rotherham’s Greasy Chip Butty song (seriously: look it up) but it nonetheless does us no credit at all when we could have something that was ours and ours alone. Is this really the best we can do? I get that we’ve been singing it for a lot of years now but that still doesn’t make it ours: should you doubt that, ask football-goers outside Hull to name the club with which the song is most commonly associated and see what answer you receive.
Indeed, when you start to cast a critical eye (ear?) over the offerings of the City vocalists you don’t have to look (or listen) very hard to find uncomfortably-high examples of plagiarism. For example, the latest big thing – namely the one that uses the tune of Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m into Something Good” – is based on one that Manyoo have been using for nigh on 15 years now. Granted, a bit of adaptation has always been an essential element of the terrace repertoires – and understandably so – but you don’t have to flog it to death.
On the subject of flogging things to death, a serious question: why, after fully 16 years, does any member of the City support persist in repeatedly bellowing, “We saw you crying on Wembley Way” every time we play Bristol City? Even disregarding the perfectly valid point that many of those singing it saw nothing of the kind because they were too young to have been at Wembley in 2008, it’s wrong on so many fronts. It’s a bit more justifiable when sung at Sheffield United a propos of the Cup semi-final in 2014 because of our closer rivalry with the Blunts, to say nothing of the relentless injustice that we seem to have incurred at their hands on numerous occasions over the years, and if say it had been Leeds we had beaten in 2008 then it would have been compulsory in eternity, but Bristol City? Seriously? Pathetic, frankly, and about as relevant these days as “Send Cliff Britton to Vietnam” (to the tune of “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”), which could be heard wafting across the Boothferry terraces as general discontent gathered momentum in the late 60s.
Before we leave that particular offering, although I wasn’t admittedly, present myself I understand that the City support at Coventry were taunting the home fans with it in light of their team’s narrow defeat at the hands of Man Utd a few days earlier in the Cup semi-final, when the Sky Blues came within an ace of pulling off what would have been a strong contender for the mother of all comebacks. If you were there and joined in, shame on you: that is all.
Of course, that opens up another theme, namely “Shite chants to the tune of ‘Sloop John B’”. There are so many of these that need pensioning off. “We saw your sister on Jeremy Kyle” was mildly amusing for a season or two, but was persisted with for far too many years, to the point not only of becoming monumentally hackneyed but also of outlasting that ill-fated programme itself and, given the circumstances surrounding its demise, becoming gratuitously offensive in the process. Secondly, “….. is a shithole, I wanna go home”: occasionally appropriate, but do we really have to have it belted out at literally every away game, especially in locations which are patently nothing of the kind? Even notwithstanding the generally poor press that our mother city receives, the times we get it sung at us at the Circle over a season can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Digressing for a minute, some years ago when I had to take clients to a Derby v Leeds game the home fans came back with “Leeds is a shithole, I’m glad we’re at home”, which I have always regarded as pretty smart.
Another one in this vein which has been particularly grating is the “We’ve got [name of manager]” to the tune of the DC5’s “Glad All Over” and recycled numerous times. Not only is the constant reincarnation of it unoriginal, it’s a pretty rubbish chant, especially just trotting out the first verse of the actual song (“You say that you love me…”) which has no relevance or link whatsoever to the refrain which it precedes. Wrong. Just wrong, but don’t be surprised if “We’ve got Timmy Walter” is being rehearsed in bedrooms from Hessle to Hedon as you read this.
To be fair, none of this is recent in origin: those HCSS members who are long enough in the tooth will remember with a wry smile how back in the 80s almost every opposing player was greeted with “Where’s your caravan?” or “Rent Boy, Rent Boy” depending on whether their hair was respectively longer or shorter than the national average. It certainly hasn’t got any better, though.
In the gratuitous offensiveness stakes, mind you, we really excel ourselves. Look at, “How shit must you be, we’re winning at home?” (the old Sloop John B again). Nobody is disputing that, at times (and especially in the season just ended) our home form has been nothing less than execrable, but never in a million years does that justify belittling your own team and washing your dirty linen quite so publicly. Do those singing that ever stop to think? (No, don’t answer that)
A particular sub-set of the offensive chant is those offensive to women, a phenomenon that has been around for many decades at British football grounds and which has thankfully waned significantly over the last decade or two, but less so at City than most other clubs it would seem. Now, the most horrible example of this in the English game at large is nothing to do with City but rather the work of Stoke fans, who are lionised for their version of “Delilah” despite it containing the line, “I put my dick in her hand and she laughed no more”: I have often wondered what Stoke’s female fans make of that. But City’s band of terrace-warriors can usually be relied upon to belt out, with depressing frequency, “If you can’t bang a woman, bang a drum” and the even more awful, “East Yorkshire is wonderful”. I can’t help reflecting, every time I hear it, upon the likely irony of the latter chant: judging by the size, shape, appearance and general unappealingness of many of the individuals who enjoy singing it so much, one wonders about the extent of their experience of what they are singing about. “My mobile phone is always full” might well be a more appropriate statement of their condition.
It isn’t just in the area of poorly-chosen, unimaginative chanting that the City support lets itself down more than most, either. The actual volume and ferocity of the crowd noise is to my ears far too often lacking and not up to what many other teams’ supporters routinely produce. This on the whole wasn’t the case at home games during the final Boothferry Park years from the reopening of the Kempton onwards, when the atmosphere in there was frequently quite superb to the point of regularly being commented on by away supporters, but we really don’t seem to have made our current home resemble a bear pit on anything like a consistent basis: if you ever watch the game from the South Stand, as I often do, it’s noticeable how a reasonably-populated away enclosure regularly outsings the North Stand by a considerable margin despite general parity between the sizes of the two groups. You might try to explain this by pointing out that it’s accepted tradition for the away support at a game to try and make a bigger noise than their counterparts, but when the two groups are juxtaposed you could not wish for more suitable conditions for some proper vocal competition.
Paradoxically, things on that front tended to be better during our Premier League campaigns, despite the large influx of tourists who would turn up just to gawp, open-mouthed, at Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard. Maybe it’s because a lot of Premier League teams themselves have fairly rubbish away support: these things are always relative, after all.
Also, and importantly, you sense that this is something of which the current City ownership and management are actually conscious and that they are trying to improve the atmosphere. The movement of the away fans into the north-east corner was a welcome step and you do sense that the owner hankers after the sort of atmosphere that he’s used to at Fenerbahce, although what further improvements he can actually make in the short term is hard to see unless the supporters start to meet him halfway.
Away games are usually better on the whole, but there is this frustrating tendency for away games – especially important ones – to start off in a seething atmosphere only for it to disappear without trace as soon as the home side take the lead. Granted, this has been the case with City for as long as I have been going and I wish I had a fiver for every time I have experienced it, but come on? It makes us look like a League 2 outfit that has fought its way through to a 6th round Cup-tie away at Arsenal or Man Citteh, when their fans turn up in their thousands, create a proper carnival atmosphere and then put their streamers, banners and balloons away when they go two down inside 20 minutes. Much too often for my liking, we do indeed only seem to sing when we’re winning.
In conclusion, it’s pretty clear to me that, whilst we undoubtedly have our moments, we could do better. It’s unlikely that things will markedly improve soon, short of plane loads of Fenerbahce maniacs being flown over every Saturday on some sort of cultural exchange mission (now there’s a thought…) as these things are about as responsive to a sudden attempted change in course as an oil tanker, but we can live in hope. Anyway, perhaps you see it differently and think we are, if not the best in the land then no better, no worse than most of our rivals. Do let me know if you take issue, and I’d be happy to debate the topic: or I might just set the Editor on you.
This article first appeared in the 2024 edition of Tigers Eye, exclusively available as part of HCSS membership