Hull City in turmoil over name-change row

Hull City supporters’ representatives held crunch talks with owner Assem Allam on Friday as part of a fans’ campaign to retain the name Hull City AFC, which has stood since its inception in 1904.

Dr Allam, who sparked controversy this summer by saying he would prefer the club to be known as Hull Tigers, agreed not to change the name unless research identifies commercial benefits – but is understood to believe the starting point is Hull City Tigers, the business name registered at Companies House in the spring.

The name Hull City Tigers is already being used at the training ground, at the KC Stadium, and other platforms including club emails.

Andy Medcalf, 46, a season ticket holder for 30 years, said: “It seems to be extremely confused around the club at the moment.

“Where we would expect to see the Hull City AFC branding associated with the football team we are instead increasingly seeing Hull City Tigers creeping in, which suggests that a rebranding exercise has already started.”

No-one at the club was available for comment.

A sense of the confusion could, however, be seen on the Twitter account of club captain Curtis Davies, where he describes himself as “Professional Footballer for a team in Hull I’m not sure the name of anymore”.

Dr Allam had told the meeting: “I’ll never touch the colours of the club – that is criminal.”