With a whiff of rebellion in the air as Wrexham fall foul of football's latest shameless asset-stripper, City eke out a decent point after lacklustre first half defending gifted the Welshmen a two goal lead after half an hour.

A thoroughly entertaining afternoon’s football at the Racecourse Ground yesterday afternoon, as the Tigers fought back in a way that would have seemed unlikely if not impossible not much more than a couple of seasons ago to claim a share of the spoils after conceding two disappointing goals early on, with both teams going hell for leather to win the game in an absolutely roistering last twenty minutes.

Indeed, quite an entertaining if poignant afternoon on the non-footballing front too, with the home support protesting over the shenanigans of chairman Alex Hamilton and his alleged attempts to sell the Racecourse to the god Retail and consign the Dragons (as they now seem to have taken to calling themselves) to the undistinguished role of bedfellows to Widnes RLFC. One has to feel sympathy with the Welshmen on this one. These are bleak times for most clubs which do not have their snout in the Murdoch trough, but Wrecsam have more to put up with than most: the town is one of the smallest to host League football, the club’s traditional fan base of miners and steelworkers has dissipated as those industries have come to grief, the club’s hinterland, while vast, is sparsely populated and not conducive to a long commute into the Racecourse, while at the same time the macadamisation of the North Wales countryside and Wirral has put the Merseyside teams within a 45-minute drive. All of this would be enough of a daily mountain to surmount even with a dedicated and financially-supportive board.

I was about to say that one can only imagine what they are going through, but of course we can: it is doubtful whether any club (and certainly not those media darlings down at Brighton) has been through the mill quite as much as City, but the essential difference is that the city of Hull and its environs do provide an environment for a professional football club to prosper with the right management and backing. The locals do however seem to be getting behind the club’s cause with determination, and some of the guerilla tactics directed at their chairman, as described in the informative "Dismal Jimmy" fanzine, brought a nostalgic smile to my face as I recalled open-topped buses outside the Fish residence, and it was good to see so many of the Tiger Nation buying the ‘zine and putting money in the collection buckets. We wish them well (and it was nice to hear the locals, as I knocked back a cheeky one in the Turf while awaiting the Birmingham train post-match, making appreciative noises about the supportive behaviour of the Tiger fans during the afternoon).

After negotiating the ranks of Welshmen selling fanzines, collecting money and handing out posters reading "Hamilton Out" and "Just Go", it was nice to see the Racecourse looking as resplendent as ever, albeit with the goal posts strangely off centre. Fears that this was a ploy by the wily Wrec boss Denis Smith - the scourge of the Tigers on many an occasion as both player and manager – to counter the Elliott threat were thankfully allayed as the woodwork and netting were moved to their rightful place shortly before the kick off as the Tiger following of, I should say, easily 1 500 began to find its voice, and the Heddlu helicopter materialised to keep the glorious sun company high above our heads. With Taylor predictably finding a place for his love child in the starting line-up notwithstanding the return of Ash from suspension, we started off as follows:-

Myhill
Joseph Cort Delaney Dawson
Green Ashbee Lewis Elliott
Barmby Facey

The game started with City kicking away from their own support and towards the Wrecsam Kop, and within a minute we had an attempt on goal as a break down the left resulted in a cross finding Greeny, who unfortunately couldn’t get enough power on the ball and looped his header over. The lively start continued, interrupted only by the occasional Wrec foray, and in the opening stages the afternoon looked set fair.

Of course, you know exactly what’s coming next. A mere dozen or so minutes in, a routine ball up the inside right channel finds Llewellyn, the home number 11, marshalled by Cort. Except that he wasn’t, as the City number five allowed the Welshman to turn, cut inside and unleash a powerful drive into the roof of the net from 10 yards. A shockingly lax piece of defending which undid a highly promising start, and for once the windmill-like arm flailing of Lewis (more of whom later) was justified as the Tigers trudged back to the centre.

To be fair, we chased the game with resolve after that, with the midfield, looking all the more solid for the return of Ash, working hard to win ball and both wide men looking lively. Although both front men were grafting manfully, though, scoring chances were not exactly plentiful during this spell. Greeny ballooned a volley over with a first-time effort from a cross form the right, and then came our best effort of the match so far, when, after an incisive run down the right, Joseph threaded the ball inside to Barmby, who at full stretch fired inches past the far post from the edge of the box with the Wrecsam netman, ex-City custodian Matt Baker deputising for the injured veteran Andy Dibble, looking well beaten from our vantage point at the other end. At the other end, whilst the City rearguard still looked a little uncoordinated at times, the pacy Wrecsam wide men, although seeing a fair bit of the leather, never seemed quite able to deliver the telling cross and Myhill was not seriously troubled, the only home efforts on target being of the innocuous long-range variety. There seemed little cause for concern despite the one-goal deficit.

Of course, you know exactly what’s coming next. Another through ball which can, at best, only be described as speculative, and the Favoured One not only allows Ferguson to beat him to it, but to compound matters then ambles along dreamily in the wake of the home skipper, the slowest player in the history of world football, allowing the latter to pick his spot low to Myhill’s right from eighteen yards. Granted, questions need to be asked about what Delaney and Cort were up to while all this was going on, but none of this excuses what can only be described as sheer bloody idleness on the part of Lewis. Quite what his impassioned response to Barmby’s angry remonstrations was all about as the players lined up for the restart it would have been interesting to know. The clock had bot even ticked as far as the half-hour mark.

Suddenly, from looking comfortable, the prospect of a drubbing was stark, and the earlier hubris-laden songs of the Tiger support were now looking decidedly misplaced. We had to get the next score, and thankfully, about another seven minutes of fairly scrappy play which did nothing to raise expectations on that particular front, we did. A couple of corners were won in quick succession on the right, and from the second of these a City head (Delaney I think) flicked the ball across the face of the goal and into the path of Elliott, making one of his favourite runs in from the right. The Ulsterman’s first-time half volley was blocked but fell to another City boot, whose goalbound effort suffered a similar fate. This time however, the ball was deflected upwards, allowing Cort, reacting quickly, to nod it over the line despite desperate Welsh attempts to clear. Be aware, though, that there was much speculation among the City support as to exactly what did happen in the far goalmouth, and the number of reports your read will probably be equivalent to the number of different descriptions that you receive. One thing we can all agree on though is that it won’t feature in Goal of the Season.

The remainder of the first half, which went on for several minutes in excess of the 45 due to an injury to Dawson which required lengthy treatment, continued in the same scrappy vein that marked the minutes up to City’s first goal, with little genuine onslaught on either goal and most of the play taking place in the central third of the field.

Overall, it was a disappointing 45 minutes. It was encouraging that City had shown enough resolve to claw themselves back into contention when things had looked bleak, but we had, over the entire half, looked by some measure to be the more incisive and enterprising outfit, which made the 0-2 deficit after half an hour all the more depressing, especially with inexcusably sloppy defensive work being the major contributory factor in both goals

Into the second half, then, and the home side seem to have the better of the early exchanges. Gradually, though, the storm is weathered and, while City generally see less of the ball than the home side, we always look the more likely to do something with it. Actual attempts on goal however are still thin on the ground, thanks largely to some dogged defending and a series of offside decisions, many of which ranged from the borderline to the downright perverse, from Mr Yellow Flag. The nearest we come to levelling the scores during this phase of the game is a clever overhead kick from Elliott which Baker, unfortunately for us, was alert to. But City are nothing if not, on the whole, resolute, and the Welsh resistance finally succumbs to increasingly-penetrative City pressure eleven minutes into the half. An astute reverse pass from Barmby creates the space for Edge, having replaced the still-struggling Dawson, to whip in a knee-high cross from the left which the ebullient Facey, looking more settled and effective by the week, tucks just inside Baker’s left-hand post from eight yards.

The end of the scoring, then, but in many respects the most absorbing phase of the game was still to come. I jotted down at this point the words "Now a question of who wants it the most" and it would have been an injustice to either side to have ruled in favour of the other on that particular point. Urged on with increasing passion by their respective sets of supporters, both teams really slugged it out as the game flowed near-ceaselessly from end to end, very much in the same pattern as before with Wrecsam seeing more of the ball but City looking the more dangerous. It really was engrossing stuff; knuckles were gnawed, cups of boiling Bovril missed open mouths, cigar ash dropped undotted onto trousers, bladders went unemptied, scrotes abandoned their moronic "Eng-ur-lund" chant in favour of material that actually made reference to the team they claimed to support. The only surprising thing was that there were few real chances at goal, thanks to (at one end) the City defence finally working itself up into some sort of cohesion and (at the other) the aforementioned stream of incorrect offside decisions continuing unabated. Myhill made a fine diving save from a long-range home effort, while Price could not get enough power behind his header when getting onto the end of an Edge cross with about five minutes to go.

All too soon, it was all over and the spoils were shared.

At referee Woolmer’s final whistle, hordes of Wrexham fans surged onto the pitch as part of a pre-planned protest. Somewhat bizarrely, instead of halting in front of the directors’ box, the crowd moved all the way to within a few feet of the stand in which the City fans were gathered, with a dozen or so Heddlu spread out across the no-mans land in between. It looked at first sight like one of those stand-offs that used to occur frequently in the 80s but never actually came to anything, but on this occasion the two sets of fans joined forces for a couple of anti-Hamilton chants and then applauded each other for several minutes until it all became a bit embarrassing. Luckily, everyone came to their senses seconds before the thing degenerated into a full-blown love-in and we all went home to reflect on an eventful afternoon.

HULL CITY (4-4-2): Myhill; Joseph, Cort, Delaney, Dawson; Green, Ashbee, Lewis, Elliott; Barmby, Facey.  Subs: Edge (for Dawson, 53), Allsopp (for Elliott, 68), Price (for Facey, 84), Brock, Hinds.

Goals: Cort 36; Facey 55

Booked: None

Sent Off: None

WREXHAM: Baker, Pejic, Roberts, Lawrence, Spender, Williams, Ferguson, Crowell, Holt, Armstrong, Llewellyn.  Subs: Jones (for Williams, 88), Smith, Mackin, Sam, Evans.

Goals: Llewellyn 13; Ferguson 29

Booked: None

Sent Off: None

REFEREE: A Woolmer

ATTENDANCE: 5,601