Last Saturday I decided that it would be more productive and enjoyable to walk up a hill so I have nothing to say about the football. It seems I chose wisely.
The ever-venerable Amber Nectar raised a question on Monday in terms of having ideas for anti-Allam protests.
I am sure that I am not the only one who immediately thinks of ideas that involve vandalism or the odd brick through a window . However, protests that involve violence or vandalism are the surest way to lose the support of a large volume of supporters, along with a sympathetic media.
Such methods would immediately hand victory to the Allams, as satisfying as they may be.
The problem comes in terms of how do you actually catch the eye or the ear of the Allams. Martin Fish attended games – vocal protests both before, during and after the game will have struck him. It is likely that they contributed to the sale of the club. The Allams don’t attend the games. They may or may not watch them on a dodgy link with dozens of annoying adverts overlaying the game with spurious close buttons that don’t close the adverts.
As a 16-year old, I would use my Friday morning IT lesson to design new Fish Out posters using my new Clip Art skills, and then deliver the posters to Martin Fish’s accountancy office. The Allams do have a nearby business.
I think there has to be a two-pronged approach. The proverbial sticks, and an olive branch.
HCST seem set on offering the olive branch. Is there a large advertising board near the family home of the Allams that could be rented with a poster displaying said olive branch?
I and probably others would begrudgingly accept the continued reign of the Allams if they stopped their war against the fans, reversed the petty name change, gave us a proper club badge, stopped being utter arseholes and listened to us. Oh yeah and apologised profusely. Well, god would make you forgive them. So I am told.
Trust and forgiveness do not arrive overnight, but the situation is not entirely impossibly irretrievable. Fucking hell, who am I kidding? Time to look at some cheerleaders.
Realistically, we have to try to kick them out. Kick. High kick. Get it? Oh cheer the fuck up.
Ehab has to see how unhappy we are. Everywhere he goes. Work, home, at the stadium, training ground, North Ferriby, whorehouse – every single place Ehab might attend needs to have polite, legal yet forceful displays of the damage that the Allams are doing to the club.
The fans need to be together, the effort needs to be coordinated by a respected fans group – a new one if must be. Not some ragtag of a Facebook group more concerned with who has administration rights.
We need to make a big deal for the media to pick up on it, ensure that the Premier League are aware, make those phone calls to 606 or TalkSport to ensure that everyone nationwide is aware of the disgusting way our club is being run into the ground.
But I really am struggling for ideas for ingenuity.
One idea is perhaps to organise some form of round-the-clock picket outside the ground. Something like a cross between the Occupy protest and a miner’s strike. It would take some organising and a lot of sacrifice. Something similar may just be to have day-long protests outside the ground on matchdays, from 9am until 9pm – something those understandably refusing to go to games could attend and thereby not miss out on a little footballing camaraderie. And the odd can of beer.
I’d like to throw marine generators onto the pitch but I can see the odd logistical issue with that. Maybe our Russian fans could hack into Allam Marine Ltd, get the customer database and sell it on Silk Road for half a bitcoin, and we can write to all their customers and explain what the Allams are doing to the club. But would your average marine generator purchaser care?
I would be most tickled if Roman Abramovich received a cod’s head but that wouldn’t really make a lot of sense. A marine generator handle in the post would just be utterly confusing.
It isn’t easy, is it?
I said at the beginning of the season that we would be in for the long haul. The Allams have lied so many times that I never believed that they wanted to sell the club.
Bastards.
Oh those IT lessons on Window 95, i remember them like it was yesterday, and nearly pissing myself once we’d reached Martin Fishs’ office!
Think we had easy then getting rid of Fish and co then David Lloyd, easy to get their attention with a bus parked on the Fish driveway then throwing tennis balls on the pitch for that twat Lloyd. Maybe next year when the spotlight is on the capital of culture more people will get to hear of what they have done to our club?
The only achievable protest that will attract wide-spread publicity and assault the ego of thd Allams is a comprehensive boycott of home games. The way things are going, we are losing fans week by week and the likelihood of those fans returning even after the exit of the Allams is questionable. In my view it would be better for a fans body, probably HCST, to take control of the situation and proactively organise a mass boycott so that instead of 8,000 empty seats hopefully there could be 12,000 or 15,000 empty seats, sending out a very powerful message via national/international media. This could be promoted by HCST as still being supportive of the team IN THE LONG TERM, but that the fans were willing to make short term sacrifices (missing games) to effect a regime change and secure a better future for the club, rather than the “death by a thousand cuts” currently being inflicted.
Agree with above comments – I was one of the organisers of Tigers 2000 campaign – you need to make like uncomfortable for sonny Jim (going for ailing papa is a guaranteed support loser) we had events in city centre, rabble rousing meetings at 147 club (one gone) the open top bus tour via Martin fish and Terry Dolans houses (one of the most surreal and funny days of my life) midnight ‘fish out’ poster putting up trips – in parallel with that direct action we really pushed the media to get on our side and local mp’s. We tried walkouts but they were only partly supported -time of walkout always seemed to coincide with city having rare period of decent play !!
I was that little girl who was singing on the sound system on that bus 😅
Felt like my entire childhood revolved around the campaigning. I can still smell those stickers