It only seems bad due to the drama queen nature of fans these days.
this tread currently has asany posts as the announcement of a new signing. A player of an age that seldom come to these shores these days and with genuine pedigree
we are in the top 8 despite massive underachievement this yr and not having to mix it with lower leagues for our survival.
Our young kids are starting to blossum plus our next level down at 19 are among the best in the country
we are currently recruiting better than any team. Currently but taylor and pritchard alone are better than many teams will do.
In short. This thread is laughable when compared to the properly bad times!!

Of course they were worse times, much worse, remember 96 and the RL's merger plans and 99 when we were all glued to the radio wondering if we had a Club to support at all!

For me, I just think at present the usual Jonah's aside who are never happy, a lot of fans feel a bit disenfranchised and 'out of the loop' having been built up to get let down so many times, it's all gets just a bit tedious in the end. Many fans seem to think they know what the solution is but don't see their beliefs being addressed any time soon so there is a deal of frustration about which somehow the Club has to rid itself of before September and season tickets going on sale.

Last year they were really panicking at the end of November and extending deadlines etc and with only 5000 or so committed it was only a last minute appeal by Adam about the 150th year that got the last couple of thousand that were wobbling back on board, that is going to be an even bigger challenge this year, unless that feeling of despair and resignation can somehow be addressed. The stark reality is of course that if we don't rally round and don't get those subscribers back then the downsizing of the organisation will have to continue. Worse times....there's been plenty!!

I agree there have been far worse times, but it is certainly one of the most frustrating. Pretty much all the ingredients are there to be at least a top6 side, but we continue to plod about in the mid to low table. I've never felt so apathetic about the club, back in the late 90s we were poor, penniless in a crumbling ground with small crowds and going out of business was likely. But there was an 'all in it together' attitude amongst the fans, now there's a mixture of apathy and people drifting away from the club, anger aimed at the club, and then a 'hardcore' fans of the club getting angry at those who are getting apathetic and defending the club. All in all its not a happy fan Base.

On your point about youth, it would be a very promising time for the club if it wasn't for the outrageious decision to merge with Rovers. While the current youth players are 'ringfenced' for a few years, I still feel this decision has been taken a good year or even 2 years too early. If this current crop of under 19s don't make it in to first team players then Pearson may have a point, but we've not given them a chance yet before he's ripping the system up. He's ruining the only good bit of work he's done for the club IMO.

Don't know about anyone else but I'm actually looking forward to the next 7 games. I think the wigan game was a blow out as a result of beating rovers and finishing in the 8. We have nothing to lose and no pressure on the players so I'm hoping we start to play some better rugby and maybe see a couple more youngsters get a chance

In terms of on field performances, not remotely close, in terms of sustainability/club remaining a going concern, nope we are in a relatively strong position still.

However the feeling amongst the fans is one of being unsettled and yet again dissapointment
The club appears on some fronts to be in turmoil/transition & of course fans are going to be upset because we have expectations. Not that we are expecting to beat all before us but that we can improve to a level that says we are at least competitive near the top end of the table, in that we haven't being for some time and that with the current owner having said X & Y with regard to where he wanted us & yet we haven't improved at all (albeit improved from last season) relative to other SL clubs.

That fear from last year were we had a lucky escape with reagrd to relegation and this year in our 150th anniversary we've had more than our fair share of damp squibs plus off field goings on, things the owner and coach have said toward the fans all add up to the general feeling of unease and for some fans they've had enough of false dawns and false promises, it's not surprising a thread like this is being discussed as it's hard as fans to take being in the wilderness for yet another season.

People have to bear in mind that back in the really dark days of the club's history we didn't have internet forums or social media for people to air their views on (or at least not as easily accessible and well used). The internet is an amplifier for bad news/misery/rage so id almost always not a true reflection of the feelings of the majority of fans. Not to mention that only a tiny fraction of any club's fanbase posts on RLFans.

In short, using this forum or social media as an indicator for anything is a really bad idea.

Obviously the op wasn't around in the mid to late seventies, or even the Lloyd era .Both much more worrying. Lack of social media then of course, so fans could only vent their frustrations in the pub, work or at games. bit of an overreaction this thread I feel

I was waiting for someone to point this out. For me it's a good comment and I totally agree

No. Now lock it

Yeah course it is!

Finishing 7th in the top division and a Challenge Cup 1/4 final.......

Nowhere near the 1st and 2nd finishes and regular Wembley victories we are used too!!

Get a grip man ffs

No of course it isn't, not even close.

1965-75 was probably the worst period in the club's history. I was very very young at that time but I do know that attendances actually dipped below a thousand for one game.

1994-99 is the worst period in my time of supporting the club, enlivened only by the promotion year of '97. That period culminated in the single worst season that I have yet witnessed as an Fc fan, the disasterous year of 1999 which ended with the club very nearly disappearing altogether.

I would admit that the time since 2006 has been frustrating but that's all it is. This has been amplified by the modern day phenomenon of social media which is simply the old style pub banter on a wider more accessible scale.

As for Pearson refusing to play anymore and take his ball home, how old do you think he is? 4!! He's invested a significant amount of cash into the club and I highly doubt he's about to walk away for nothing just because a few people on an internet forum have said yah boo sucks to him. I think you find he's made of sterner stuff than that.

As for the OP's assertion that the fan base is the root of all the club's ills, that is clearly stuff and nonsense. Successful clubs are built on vision, organization and hard work, factors which have been sorely missing these last eight years. In less than ten years we've slipped from being a couple of signings away from being a genuine powerhouse in the game to our current situation of seemingly perpetual mid/lower table mediocrity. How do you expect the fan base to react? Stand up and clap like performing seals!

If the team play well, the reaction is usually good, if they perform badly then that sense of frustration which has built up over the last eight years tends to boil to the surface again.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but the original post in this thread reads like another in an increasingly puerile series of posts.

We have had a lot worse in the last forty years ............

Back then it was a shortage of money/fans thats not the problem now is it.

We had a long period of false dawns under the last administration, too much jam tomorrow and when they left and AP took over we all got a renewed faith in the future. Trouble was we had a few recruitment mess ups, a management clearly out of its depth at just about every level. Most of us can see the main problem and have little faith left in anyone's ability to improve the situation. We lurch from one home goal to the next, players leaving and others coming in on far to regular basis, no stability and players seem to fall in and out of favour for no apparent logical reason.

This club has one chance left for next seasons pass sales, a storming end run in the super 8s and/or sack the coach and get in someone who knows how to coach and manage, media and command respect amongst the fans.

Because I can thousands walking away on a regular basis from buying a season pass, many like me will continue to attend and not attend if it gets like it has/is. Once these people start staying away a slide down is almost unavoidable, some may blame those fans for staying away. At the end of the day too many things have pulls on people entertainment money and Rugby League is slowly strangling itself. The games future is bleak, SKY viewing figures are dropping , crowds are dropping and the whole game from the kids upwards is dying.

Yep, totally right Ian.

But let's look on the bright side. We have a club. We play in a beautiful stadium. We have young players excited and motivated to play for FC. We have genuine World Class players signing next year. We have the most passionate fans in the game and, most importantly, we are Hull FC....unique and with 150 years history. We have had difficult periods in the recent past but this isn't on par the depths of the pat.

Frank Pritchard or Shane Endacott?! Rob Danby or Mahe Fonua?

People need to bang their head against a wall and remember where we are now.

It's more frustrating then 98-99 because in those days everything was wrong off the field, things are not like that now, or didn't need to be. I take the point about Pearson going, but he has to realise very quickly that his stupid decisions are ruining the club and it's so obvious. The coach being the big one. Pearson moans about the lack of talent coming through, but we've had a sprinkling of a few good young players he's wasted, and more worrying we have a brilliant 19s side that will be completely wasted on Radford. The farce with the merger will mean that we'll probablly never see a young player come through the ranks again or at least for the foreseeable future (the concept is not a bad one but logistics and the uncertaincy of it all will take years to iron out). Again he moans about attendance's, but attendances's are reflective of what happens on the field, a new coach would at least encourage some stay aways back and give the side a fighting chance.

If he wants to stay pig headed and not lose face that's up to him, he'll lose money and we'll lose our club, or as we know it now anyways. It's very depressing at the moment though, on the face it might not seem so bad but it's hard not to feel disillusioned when you think what could have been, and how easy we could get back in track but seem unwilling to do so.

pearson's biggest mistake was piissing off allam. It has made things difficult on so many levels but mainly it has completely ruined any chance we have of leveraging our use of the best stadium in SL. For a supposed savvy businessman he sure makes some monumental fukk ups