Hull City are at home to Manchester City today. Now, while last season's 2-2 draw between the clubs was a memorable occasion, as the Sky cameras transmitted some howlers at the back, sublime finishing and a bizarre soap opera surrounding a free kick, the previous encounter between the two will remain sharp in the memory forever.
We have to go back to the opening day of 1988-89, a day of sunshine and many debuts. Lee Warren and John Moore started their first games having joined in the summer, and indeed the man who purchased them, Eddie Gray, was also taking charge of his first game.
Manchester City were projecting their usual shtick about being far too good and far too big to be anywhere but the top flight, even though they had been horribly relegated two seasons before and had finished a crazy ninth in the second division, despite memorably doing over Huddersfield Town 10-1 in a League game. Their fans had become newsworthy for their fetish for inflatable props, most notably the enormous oxygen-stuffed banana, which had become their main match accessory.
Boothferry Park's North Stand, and the uncovered bit of the Kempton in the north east corner, was full of grown men singing vile songs about Munich while holding up large plastic replicas of fruit. The ground wasn't full, as the apathy towards the Tigers continued within their home city, but the travelling contingent took the figures over 11,000 and were considerably loud to boot.
On the pitch, Gray had kept faith with most of the players Brian Horton had left behind when he had been fired the previous April, adding just Warren and Moore to the squad over the summer. A third debutant was Steve Terry, the centre back who sported a large sticking plaster on his forehead and who Dennis Booth had signed from Watford during the short period betwixt Horton and Gray when he had been verbally assured that he would be the new manager.
Moore's presence up front meant that the skilful, gawky Alex Dyer moved out to the left wing. Warren, a teenager whom Gray knew from his Rochdale days, started in the defensive midfield role. Manchester City were resplendent with a particularly gifted crop of youngsters, including the likes of David White, Paul Lake, Ian Brightwell, Steve Redmond and Andy Hinchcliffe.
And this became one of the Tigers' biggest acts of daylight robbery. Tony Norman kept out everything that Manchester City could aim his way, and that was rather a lot. City played some good football, with Dyer outstanding down the wing, but chances were few and far between. Moore struggled to hold the ball up - despite his considerable frame - and although Warren worked hard, there was little creativity in front of him.
And the result? 1-0 to the Tigers. Keith Edwards, goalscorer supreme, forced in a close range chance more against the run of play than any talented football hack could ever have described in the Sunday papers a day later. Things would settle down for Gray afterwards, with victories coming via more convincing displays. His decision to sell Norman at Christmas helped turn the season into a complete nightmare, even though a run to the FA Cup fifth round maintained some positive headlines until Liverpool won 3-2 at Boothferry Park.
As for the debutants, well Moore never recovered from his anonymity on day one and the campaign that soon started against him became one of the bitterest that an unforgiving Tiger Nation ever aimed at one player. When he was dropped for three games, a cheer of joy went up and during this period City defeated Chelsea 3-0. Then he was recalled for a match against Swindon Town and a large boo rang out when his name was announced. He scored the only goal of the game - albeit when someone else's shot smacked him on the side of the head on the way in - but it didn't establish any faith in him and after a particularly awful sitter-missing 45 minutes against Bournemouth in November 1988, he was substituted at half time and never appeared again.
Warren, conversely, settled into a long and reliable Tigers career which never quite saw him become an all-time hero but nonetheless earned him great respect as the Tigers lurched from one crisis to another. He played in midfield, at right back and sometimes centre back for five spectacularly stressful seasons (and even went in goal) before he was unwisely - and unpopularly - released at the end of the 1993/4 season. He was still playing the professional game in his late 30s and turned out for the Tigers in the Masters tournament last year.
Terry had a strange old time at City. Known for his "big esh" clearances from kick off, the elastoplasted defender lost his place in the team in the December to local youngster Neil Buckley and, remarkably, didn't get it back for four months, missing out on the big FA Cup tie against Liverpool. He played alongside Peter Skipper at the back on the opening day, but the long-serving Skipper was out of the door within a fortnight, allowing the cultured Richard Jobson a route back to his favoured position (Gray had put the exquisite Jobson at right back). Eventually it was a Jobson-Buckley partnership for which that season would be known, and although Terry forced his way back in towards the end of the campaign at Buckley's expense and was a favourite of the briefly returning Colin Appleton the next season, he would be gone on deadline day 1990 as Stan Ternent didn't rate him. Gray was fired after an appalling run of one win in the last 18 matches that began the moment the final whistle sounded against Liverpool.
Manchester City were promoted as runners-up behind Chelsea at the end of 1988-9, so the Tigers, who finished fourth bottom yet were never in relegation danger, could at least say that the best two sides in the division had been beaten at Boothferry Park. The victory against Manchester City was, however, a quite extraordinary miscarriage of justice which we happily took as the deflated bananas were strewn all over North Road and Askew Avenue afterwards by Mancunians feeling hard done by.
There would be nobody dressed in amber complaining if something similar occurred today, even if the bottom has fallen out of the blow-up banana industry.
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