Stoke City are this weekend's visitors to the KC Stadium, making the soap opera surrounding Phil Brown's fragile future all the more interesting. This is because Stoke fans, as a people, hate our manager more than any other faction in football.
The glee in their voices when they went one goal and then two goals up in this game last season as they shouted "Tango, what's the score?" at a hapless Brown was plain for all to hear. Despite this unpleasant line of inquiry, they were by some distance the best fans to visit the KC during the campaign. Loud, incessant, passionate and always positive.
Stoke don't like us and we don't like them. But for all the mutual hatred, certainly from this side of the argument it is hard not to envy, but most of all just admire, what Stoke have done. There was little to choose between the two clubs in the Championship when we were both promoted (our games were both 1-1 draws) and ultimately only two defeats in our last three games sent Stoke up, deservedly, and left us in the play-offs.
However, despite our showbiz start last season, by New Year it was evident that Stoke were better equipped to continue as a Premier League club. They didn't make as hard a job of it as us, although that game at the KC was their survival clincher and there were only two games remaining thereafter. Their success in the transfer window in January was made all the more sour for us by Paul Duffen claiming the hopeless Manucho was a better investment than James Beattie. Beattie scored loads for Stoke while Manucho struggled to locate his own buttocks.
The hatred among older fans goes back to that FA Cup quarter final in 1971. Among the younger element, it refers to the 2007 clash at the Britannia Stadium when Stoke were on the cusp of the play-offs and the Tigers were on the cusp of relegation. Stoke were leading 1-0 until the third minute of injury time when Nick Barmby shinned a volley in from distance.
Well, we went totally haywire in the away end. It was one of the more intensely celebrated Hull City goals this blog can recall in almost three decades of watching the Tigers. Barmby wheeled off to the touchline in celebration and, as the TV footage shows, stewards had to prevent raging Stoke fans, loosened from the seating and heading for the pitch, from physically attacking him. In a way I still wish a little that the leading assailant-in-waiting had reached Barmby, because Ian Ashbee was alongside him and would have happily kicked the barmy invader into next week.
This point ended Stoke's play-off hopes and their fans were not happy with us. We were kept in the concourses and then sealed inside the away end parking area by police while they tried to disperse Stoke's angrier element. Coins and mud and anything else they could find was hurled over the meshing and actually struck people, including children. Then, when all seemed to have quietened down, we were allowed to leave the stadium but were soon ambushed further along the business park where Stoke's ground is based.
The point that day not only robbed Stoke of the play-offs, but gave us a real chance of sealing safety the following week, which we duly did by beating Cardiff City away from home, sending the hated Leeds United down in the process. Even Stoke fans would admit we did football a great service that particular day. But their hatred for us was clear.
The following season, which ended with both of us going up, was free of any spats or trouble between the two clubs. Indeed, there was an element of kindred spirituality going on as Stoke realised, just as we had, that Jon Parkin was a tubby waste of space and needed to be sold on. (Maybe they got their revenge for that by lending us Ibrahima Sonko this season, and thank goodness the rules dictate he plays no part this weekend). But it seemed that Tony Pulis, the becapped Stoke manager, and Brown did not have a great relationship. Criticism of Stoke's brutal but effective playing style was heard from the direction of East Yorkshire and the fans took it upon themselves to monster Brown.
Of course, Brown's own reputation with all footballing parties crashed as City struggled through the second half of the Premier League season, but it was from Stoke where the dislike was aired most keenly. Indeed, the last nail in the relegation coffin seemed to be malleted in by Stoke when Ricardo Fuller and then Liam Lawrence, with a fine shot, scored the goals that earned a 2-1 win and a second Premier League season for the visitors. At that point, we felt we would go down and, crucially, felt we deserved to go down. Sent down by Stoke, on our patch, with their fans taunting our manager all the way to obscurity? It felt rotten.
But the point at Bolton and the considerable ineptitude of clubs further north than City rescued us, and so still Stoke haven't managed to break our hearts since 1971 (though we also went out of the FA Cup to them in 1972, though more conclusively and less controversially). They stayed up last season, but so did we. Yet when we stayed up in 2007 with the aid of Barmby's late goal, we stopped them from going up in the process. Their record against us in recent times is better (we've only won one of our last eight meetings, while they've won three; oddly the home team has never been the winner in any of these games) but they've never in that time condemned us to anything, despite believing they'd done so in two of the last three seasons. Unless you count mild hilarity at our expense, but ultimately we could cope with being teased and criticised as we didn't go back down.
This Sunday, with Brown's job on the knife's edge, they may get their wish to inflict harm on us, or specifically our manager - indeed, they may still get their wish even if they lose the game. If Brown were to go next week, then he could verily take even the most minuscule of consolations from beating the team, and the set of fans, that have had it in for him the most. And even if things were settled and solvent round our way, it's still about time we beat the dreaded Stoke at the KC.
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