Bygones: Defiant tone heralds end of an era for Hull City at Boothferry Park

AS Hull City's supporters looked on in solemn mood as the flag atop the North Stand was lowered for a final time, then chairman Adam Pearson had just one thought in his mind.
Adam Pearson, former chairman of Hull City AFC, at Boothferry Park. Picture: Terry CarrottAdam Pearson, former chairman of Hull City AFC, at Boothferry Park. Picture: Terry Carrott
Adam Pearson, former chairman of Hull City AFC, at Boothferry Park. Picture: Terry Carrott

“I couldn’t wait to get out of the place,” he recalls of the afternoon exactly 15 years ago today when the Tigers bid farewell to Boothferry Park with a 1-0 defeat to 10-man Darlington in the basement division.

“The fans were very emotional and I totally understood where they were coming from. Boothferry Park had been their home for so long.

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“But, as I looked down from the directors box after the fans had come on the pitch, I just wanted to leave. The place was rotten and falling down. How it was seen as fit for purpose, I am not sure.

GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.
GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.

“Everyone laughed when the ball landed on the roof because they knew a shower of rust was on its way. But I hated that.

“The future was what mattered and, to me, we had an exciting future once at the KC Stadium. It was everything Boothferry Park was not. I never went back after that final game. I just wanted to move forward.”

Pearson’s determination to look to the future come 5pm on December 14, 2002, was borne out by the huge strides taken once the club was ensconced at a stadium that cost £44m to build.

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Five-and-a-half years after kicking off life at the KC with a Boxing Day victory over Hartlepool United, Hull were in the Premier League.

Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.
Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.

However, the slightest mention of ‘Bunkers’, ‘Kempton’ or even those unique six floodlight pylons that towered over the west of the city for so many years is enough to turn even the most stoic Hullensian a tad misty-eyed.

Boothferry Park was City’s home for more than half a century. By the end, it’s decline was clear for all to see but there was a time when the ground beamed with pride, not least in the wake of the cantilever South Stand being built in the Sixties.

It was a fitting venue for talents such as Chris Chilton and Ken Wagstaff but even City’s most prolific strike pairing could not bring the top-flight football Hull craved.

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By 1981, City had slipped into the Fourth Division and a ground once filled to bursting by a 55,019 crowd in the FA Cup had barely 4,000 hardy souls rattling around inside.

GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.
GOODBYE: Graham Alexander and his son Mark parade their flag outsisde of Boothferry Park before Hull City's last game at the ground.

The North Stand was demolished and replaced by a supermarket, the retained small terrace section doing little to ease the sense of loss felt by those who could remember those big attendances of the past.

Later, the large Kempton terrace down one side would be closed twice on safety grounds and then re-opened with a reduced capacity. Then came the final ignominy as City were locked out for eight weeks by landlord David Lloyd over unpaid rent during the summer of 2000.

Six months later, Hull’s hand-to-mouth existence meant the postponement of a home match against Blackpool pushed the club into administration. Cue the arrival of Pearson and then the game-changing move to the KC Stadium.

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“The ground was rotten and falling down but the atmosphere was still there,” recalls the 53-year-old, now the owner of Super League club Hull FC.

Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.
Hull City supporters staged a good-natured pitch invasion to mark the end of their team's last-ever match at the Boothferry Park ground. Picture: John Jones.

“It was very much still an intimidating place to visit for opposing teams.

“I remember a win over Scunthorpe a few weeks before that final game against Darlington and the noise was incredible, especially from the railway side.

“They pushed us on towards the three points that day.”

The ability of the Boothferry Park crowd to influence matters was evident again on that farewell afternoon.

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As Craig Liddle clattered into Phil Jevons two minutes into the second half, a free-kick and a booking for the Quakers man looked the most likely outcome.

Then, though, an inflamed Kempton, for the final time, vented their fury and referee Mark Warren brandished a red card.

Darlington, a goal ahead thanks to Simon Betts’s first-half strike, barely left their own half after that but, no matter how hard the Tigers pushed, the equaliser just wouldn’t come their way.

The final whistle blew and there was only a resigned silence, punctured with a thousand mutters of ‘Typical City’.

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“To me, that day was the passing of the old Hull City,” says Pearson.

“There was all the excitement and build-up and, yet, it went horribly flat.

“I remember thinking, ‘This can’t happen again – the next time we have a big occasion and need a win at the new stadium, we have to make it happen’.

“It was a fresh start for the whole club.”

Those three promotions in five years seemed a long way off as many in the capacity 14,162 crowd filed on to the pitch after that defeat to Darlington.

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Photographs were taken and clumps of turf removed before, eventually, voices were found.

A defiant tone was established and then the flag flying above the North Stand was lowered one last time.

The end had come.