When I saw the Hull side come out in those horrible grey strips I thought they looked like they’d been undercoated and as the game progressed it was clear that they needed a good deal of gloss. Mind you, we weren’t much better than them but we did enough to win this crucial match and get the three points. Nothing less could have been acceptable but as it turned out, our immediate rivals either drew or lost and this all helped our cause too.

The atmosphere in the stadium was great as I took my seat around 2.50 and the large turnout of Hull fans played a good part in this. I noticed Delilah was dancing more than usual as our theme music played while Samson was waving his arms around a bit. How do you become a mascot, by the way? I fancy doing it sometime. Anyway, Kevin Kilbane’s entrance onto the turf was greeted less than enthusiastically and he further endeared himself by a crunching tackle after forty minutes or so for which he was rightly yellow-carded. The first half ebbed and flowed and the many errors and general edginess reflected the tense nature of the affair. Too many times we passed the ball back to Gordon when it looked like we were about to attack and nearly all of our side were below par, with the exception of Edwards, who hustled and bustled effectively and won a few apparently lost causes. He’s getting there bit by bit. Davenport also didn’t look half bad and near the half hour he could have put us one-up if he hadn’t been so surprised to find the ball at his feet several yards out. At least he was in a scoring position. Lots of folks had already descended for their half-time slash/refreshment when Cisse headed us into the lead following good work by Davenport on the left flank. Until then the big Hull defenders and their goalie had eaten up most of our high balls and that lowish cross was headed in by Cisse at the perfect moment.

Half-time was more entertaining than usual, firstly by the presence on the pitch of the mighty Dick Malone, who did the draw, and then by members of the Academy Under 9 squad, who hopped about for a while in the centre circle before doing a bit of a lap of honour culminating in a Cisse-Kenwyne goal-celebrating shuffle at one of the corner-flags. They got a very good ripple and many of the Hull fans joined in too.

We started the second-half with a bullet and nearly doubled our lead within fifteen seconds of the restart when Cisse burst through but his shot was saved. After that though it was mainly arses to the wall, eyes on the clock, all hands to the pumps and whatever other bodily part metaphor you can imagine as the game came and went with decent chances on both sides. I have to say though that seeing subs like Malbranque and Richardson coming on soothed my fevered brow somewhat. With about fifteen minutes to go I was happy to see Geovanni go off and Mendy come on but not long afterwards the latter was extremely fortunate not to be at least yellow-carded after a bit of a one-on-one-hate-interface with Richardson followed by a nutting motion of his head. The crowd were well behind the team today and we needed it as four minutes of stoppage time were announced. Murphy replaced Cisse but fair dues to the boy he swivelled and created a great chance that rebounded from the left post. This is where Murphy is good. Whistles were echoing around the ground and everyone was on the edge of their seats, apart from those strange folk who leave before the end, but the one important whistle finally went and there was much jubilation and hand-shaking as we listened to the bad results of our rivals.

Respect to Denny. See you at West Brom next week.

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