The Last Word: How Hull’s growling owner could solve Tiger row at a stroke

Your football club is in danger of liquidation. Debts are in excess of £43million, and the taxman is demanding payment. The prevailing culture of self-indulgence, so deeply ingrained that even part-time secretaries have company cars, invites disaster.

A potential saviour emerges. He has lived in your city for more than 40 years, and gives millions to the local hospital and university. He funds aspiring athletes, because he believes “sport is the most powerful tool to correct society”.

An immigrant, he arrived in this country with £20 to his name. His family is now worth in the region of £320million. He knows what hard work is like, because he laboured, loading trailers in a flour mill. Though a qualified accountant, with an MBA, he also operated as a welder.

He has never forgotten the kindness of a foreman who ensured he had as much overtime as he needed. He is forever in the debt of a bank manager who ignored company policy and gave him a £400 unsecured loan to start up a business, exporting wool.

He owns his company, 100 per cent and is not beholden to shareholders. He believes in the broader benefits of locally focused philanthropy. As he explains: “We all make money out of our communities and there must come a time to give back to that community.”

Is he the sort of character you would welcome as an owner? Is he a worthy custodian of an institution deeply rooted in a blue-collar city? Based on the preceding summary, surely only the most desperately cynical or illogically obtuse supporter would demur.

Would this man pass football’s “fit and proper” ownership test? Compared to the approved list of fantasists, opportunists and speculators who manipulate the game for their own, often nefarious purposes, he is evidently a paragon of virtue.

The saviour’s name is Dr Assem Allam. The football club is the institution still known to the FA and Premier League as Hull City AFC. That’s as far as the fairytale extends. In parts of his adopted city, the self-styled benefactor is as popular as botulism or the banking industry.

A confession: I was predisposed to loathe him, and everything he represents. His contempt for fans is extraordinary and unprecedented in its virulence. His insistence in ignoring 109 years of history, and changing the club’s name to Hull Tigers, is muddle-headed marketing at best. It cannot be excused by similar crackpot schemes, such as cricket’s newly enfranchised Birmingham Bears.

And yet…

He has the right to do as he pleases. He has offered to recompense alienated season-ticket holders, and is ready to underwrite a record signing in January. Football has a culture of dependency, whether those of us who cherish its capacity for romanticism like it or not.

Newcastle’s shotgun marriage with Mike Ashley is dysfunctional, yet it endures. Without Vincent Tan, Cardiff City would be playing in blue in the Football League. Hull’s heavy-handed approach to banner-flaunting protesters is objectionable, but mirrors Manchester United’s strategy against the anti-Glazer movement.

Football clubs are not happy-clappy self-help groups. Even the best example of a supporter-run club, Portsmouth, sacked manager Guy Whittingham, a local legend who had worked for a pittance in the hardest times.

There is a chance for Allam to prove he is a rational, pragmatic man rather than a power-crazed egotist. He should give the club’s shirt sponsors, pawnbrokers whose payday loans carry an APR of 897 per cent, notice they are no longer needed when the current deal expires at the end of this season.

He should abandon the name change, emblazon the word “Tigers” across the shirt, and sell replicas at the lowest possible discounted price. The cost of the gesture is unlikely to exceed £2m, small change for someone who admits the bill for his involvement is £66m, and counting.

Then everyone could get on with enjoying that rarity, a club with a common sense of purpose.

Rugby League blew its chance in the spotlight

The Rugby League World Cup ended at Old Trafford last night, with the usual pomp and pyrotechnics. Everyone involved congratulated themselves on a job well done.

Those with a vested interest hailed the tournament as a huge success. Crowds were passionate, and the athleticism of players like Sonny Bill Williams and Greg Inglis was awesome. Such a shame no-one outside the bubble noticed.

Any sport which preaches to the converted with such ardour is doomed to remain on the margins. Rugby League had a chance to emerge from its heartlands over the past six weeks of the tournament, and blew it spectacularly.

The tournament, which managed somehow to be simultaneously overblown and threadbare, registered on the national consciousness only once, when England lost their only credible contest, the semi-final against New Zealand, in the dying seconds.

The marketing of the event was disastrous and betrayed those who work at junior level outside the M62 corridor, where the World Cup was something other than a distant rumour. London Broncos’ intention to enter administration was terribly timed.

England’s best players have gravitated towards Australia. The domestic game is hopelessly introspective and faces fundamental change. The so-called feelgood factor is a PR-driven fantasy.

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TURF WARS

Motors TV, an unheralded satellite channel for petrolheads which champions all forms of motorsport, is apparently going big on lawnmower racing.

Compared to the stultified spectacle of Formula One, where thrills are in inverse proportion to the egos of the drivers and their helmet-carriers, it should be compelling.