The Hull City Project: Lived to see another day

HC avoids the drop. They have work to do, but the scrappy run will continue at least another 38 games.

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These Hull City fans, like our writer Jeff Bradley, were excited despite the loss to Man U.

What is "The Hull City Project?"

What a difference a year makes. Or does it?

A year ago, I sat in a hotel room outside London watching on television as old man striker and local lad Dean Windass scored the goal that sent Hull City into the top level of English Football for the first time in their 104-year history (and triggered this thing we call The Hull City Project). Caught up in the moment, I sprung from my bed and shouted, "Yes!"

I'd fallen in love with the club and its rags to riches story. Made them my team. Tried to make them yours.

This past Sunday, I kept hitting the refresh button on my Blackberry, watching the scores from three matches on the final day of the 2009 English Premier League season.

Middlesbrough at West Ham United.

Newcastle at Aston Villa.

Manchester United at Hull City.

At the end of 90 minutes, again, I shouted the word, "Yes!" Only this time, it was more a sense of relief than jubilation.

Hull City have survived to fight another day, another year, in the EPL.

In their bid to "stay up" in the EPL, Hull City controlled its own destiny. Win and in. However, when you considered Hull City had been able to win exactly one game since December 6th, and that the opponent was Manchester United, well, I kind of figured the Tigers would be needing some help to stay up. Sure enough.

Even though Man United (who will play in the Champions League final this Wednesday) rolled out a lineup of reserves with an average age of 23, I was fully aware that United's reserves are the best and the brightest football prospects on the face of the earth, all well out of Hull City's price range, and all hungry to show the manager Alex Ferguson that they're good enough to play for him next season, or be on his bench come Wednesday.

And 24 minutes, Hull City was trailing by a goal.

I agonized over that scoreline for about 15 minutes (and about 60 clicks of refresh) until I saw that Newcastle United defender Damien Duff had put a ball into his own net at Villa Park. Newcastle has shot itself in the foot so many times during this disgraceful campaign that it just started to feel like it was fate for the Geordies to go down for the first time in 20 years. The Middlesbrough-West Ham score was not as big a deal to me, because not only did Boro need to win the game, they needed to win by a lot of goals to pass Hull. West Ham took that game off my radar early when they took a 1-nil lead.

During the second half, a million clicks of the Blackberry brought no more goals in either match that mattered, and the ESPN Gamecast play-by-play writer informed me that the crowd at the KC Stadium in Hull were going crazy…

A loss to Manchester United did not matter to my friends in Hull. What mattered was that, at the end of 38 games, played over nine months, Hull City were better than three teams in the EPL (Newcastle United, Middlesboro and Wigan Athletic), and that their stay at the top level of the game will go on for at least another season.

"We're looking to improve year on year," said defender Andy Dawson, whose been with Hull City since 2003 and has played at four professional levels with the club. "And squeezing into the Premier League has given us the chance to move on again."

Forgotten now (hey, it's a feel-good story) is the fact that Hull City's performance since December has been abysmal. And who cares that the scribes are calling the Tigers the worst team to ever avoid relegation in the history of the EPL? Not me.

Not my manager.

"It's the best day of my career as a player, coach or manager," said Hull boss Phil Brown. "It's better than beating Bristol City in the play-off final last year (on the Windass goal). I know we've lost the game but it's about what's happened over 38 games. I think everyone expected us to be one of the bottom three and we've maybe proved a lot of people wrong. How we've done it has been a little bit different, certainly after the first 10 games. But I always said the first 10 games would help us at the end of the season, and so it's proved. It's not about the one today, it's the 37 before that."

And the chance to play 38 more next year.

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