On Humberside, where Saturday night still means the working men’s club rather
than X Factor, a Meat Loaf tribute band called Bat Out Of Hull are packing
them in, though there’s no danger of the football team’s success being gone
when the morning comes.
Hull City, everybody’s favourites for relegation when the season started, are
riding high in their first season in the top division, attractive as well as
competitive under the solidly working class (his description) management of
Phil Brown. The Tigers’ tale is a remarkable one. Twenty-second in the
Championship when Brown took charge, little more than 18 months later they
beat Arsenal, Tottenham and West Ham in quick succession to establish
themselves in the top six in the Premier League. The transformation is such
that they say this 49-year-old Tynesider has no need of the Humber Bridge -
he can walk across the water without it.
Life was not always so rosy for the erstwhile electrician. He was sacked by
Derby County barely seven months after being appointed a manager for the
first time. Out of work, he knew some dark days, feeling “worthless” and
“emasculated”. The Rams’ loss proved the Tigers’ gain when the clubs
exchanged places in the elite at the end of last season.
The story comes as a welcome reminder that for all football’s venality,
romance is not dead. Ten years ago, Hull were bottom of the old Fourth
Division, losing to Leyton Orient and Scunthorpe in front of ‘crowds’ of
4,000. As recently as 2001 they were forced into administration under the
chairmanship of a tennis also-ran, David Lloyd, who was as successful at the
old Boothferry Park as he was at Wimbledon. The revival, which has seen
every home match sold out for the rest of the season, began when a local
businessman, Adam Pearson, replaced Lloyd and appointed Peter Taylor as
manager. Taylor twice gained promotion before decamping to Crystal Palace,
leaving Brown to complete the fairy tale.
How had it all come to pass? “I was out of work [after Derby] when I got a
phone call from Phil Parkinson, who was manager here at the time,” says
Brown. “He had come to Hull from Colchester as the new messiah. Peter Taylor
had taken the club as far as he could and it needed someone to take it on to
the next level, so Phil came in, but he struggled and asked me to help out
on the training ground, which I did. Unfortunately, he lasted only another
half a dozen games before getting the sack.
“I had six games in charge as caretaker, won three and drew one, and got the
job. It was Adam Pearson who appointed me. Unbeknown to me, a new owner,
Paul Duffen, was waiting in the wings. We avoided relegation in the last
match of the season, Adam left and Paul gave me the opportunity to stay.
Together we drew up a three-year plan and realised our objective in one.”
Easy? Life has never been that for Phil Brown.
A journeyman full-back with Hartlepool, Halifax, Bolton and Blackpool, he felt
the need to serve his time as an electrician “for something to fall back on.
Stuart Pearce did exactly the same as me. I advertised in the Hartlepool
programme for rewiring jobs, just as he did when he first joined Nottingham
Forest”.
Brown quit playing at Blackpool in 1996 when he became assistant to the
manager, Sam Allardyce – the start of a close, enduring friendship. Brown
moved to Bolton in the same capacity, under Colin Todd, and when Todd left
he took over as caretaker, winning four out of five games, only to give way
to Allardyce. He stayed on to assist “Big Sam” for six successful years.
They split in June 2005, when Brown went to Derby.
“I wanted a shot at management, Sam knew that,” says Brown. “Over our six
years together I applied for three jobs: West Brom when Bryan Robson got it,
Burnley when Steve Cotterill was appointed and the third was Derby. I
inherited a club that was £33m in debt, with a history of mismanagement. All
sorts had gone on. Being inexperienced, I wanted to bring in someone like
Brian Horton [now his trusted No 2 at Hull] to help, but that wasn’t allowed.
“If I’d had the backroom staff I have now, I would have taken Derby into the
Premier League. Instead I got the sack and had eight months in the
wilderness. That was horrendous, I could feel my fire going out. I felt lost
and experienced real fear. I went to a couple of games but I was paying lip
service to it. The harsh reality is that it’s a cruel game.
“I was out of work and it felt like football had turned its back on me. All
right, I had my pay-off from Derby, but when that ran out where was the next
few bob coming from? I had to put food on the table for my family [his wife,
Karen, and two children].
“I was going out every day, as if I had a job – I just couldn’t stay in the
house. I’d be divorced now if I’d done that. I don’t think man and wife were
made to be with each other 24 hours a day. Men like me need to go out to
work to feel needed. I felt worthless. I had no motivation, no direction in
life and that’s an awful thing.”
Hull saved him and vice versa. Fast forward a season. Teams promoted to the
Premier League via the playoffs slide straight back down more often than not
– witness Derby under Paul Jewell. Had Brown feared the worst? “Billy Davies
[manager when Derby were promoted] argued that the playoff winners were
always three weeks behind everyone else in preparation time but I don’t
agree. I saw us being three weeks ahead because our fitness levels were
better than the rest. We were still training and playing that much later,
while the others were on holiday.
“At the end of May, my big decision was, ‘Do I put back the start of preseason
training? I thought, ‘No, why don’t I utilise the fitness we have now and
wait for the three international breaks to give the players time off?’ Being
fitter than everybody else definitely stood us in good stead in our first 10
games.”
Doing transfer business so late had been a problem. “We still had our shopping
to do when the others had done theirs and there were difficult times when we
missed out on big players. But then somebody casually slipped Geovanni into
a conversation. I was meeting an agent to discuss a goalkeeper, Mart Poom,
who we wanted. We got that deal half-signed and sealed and then the agent
said, ‘I can get Geovanni for you from Manchester City’. That’s how casual
it was – just an aside at the end of a deal.
“When Geo drove up here, we tied a big yellow balloon on top of the Humber
Bridge and told him it was the sun. Welcome to Hull!
“That was a good day at the office, as was going to meet George Boateng at
Schiphol airport [in Amsterdam] and getting him to sign. Slowly but surely
we had a bit of Premier League quality coming in.”
Brown’s summer spending was a paltry £8.7m net, though his wage bill rose
substantially. “We got promoted on the 11th-biggest budget in the
Championship but this year it has gone up by more than threefold.”
He says he is a friend and former partner, but not a clone, of Allardyce,
favouring a more aesthetic approach. “I want to play football, to get people
off their seats and punching the air. Against Manchester City last week I
was off my seat when [Daniel] Cousin flashed a header at their keeper and
[Kasper] Schmeichel made the save. Man City were on the rack then, the
decibel level in the stadium went up a notch and the hairs were standing on
the back of my neck. That’s the sort of manager I am.”
The 2-1 victory at Arsenal at the end of September had been a watershed. “It
was just a great day. The changing room after that game was a definition of
the word belief. There was a whooping and a hollering, the music was on and
they were all dancing.
“Because I’d been to the Emirates, to Old Trafford and to Chelsea with Sam and
Bolton and upset them all, I know what it feels like and I know what a
result like that can do for a set of players. Before that, the feeling was,
‘Maybe we don’t belong here’. Now we knew we did.”
After such a bright start, targets had to be revised. “We’ve exceeded all
expectations, including our own. We had a goal for our first 10 games and we
exceeded it by two wins. Having been in the top six so far, finishing
halfway is a nice thought, but I’m not going to make any bold predictions.
What I will say is that it has been a great year so far, and I’m sure we’ll
look back and think, ‘Hellfire, that was brilliant’.”
And so say all of us.
