Hull City on tour: Family feel to once-divided club is driving success under Acun Ilicali

There are plenty of Turkish media at Wednesday's training session and countless representatives of sponsors and owner Acun Ilicali's media company, making sure advertising hoardings around the pitch are in the right place and the players have all the right photographs taken with all the right products.

Hull's mascots, Roary and Amber, are here, "Hüll" tour T-shirts over their tiger costumes.

Yet one comment from Andy Dawson, who made over 300 appearances for the club as a player and has since been an academy coach, caretaker manager and is now one of head coach Liam Rosenior's assistants, is hugely telling.

"We're getting back to the football club we knew many years ago," he says.

Because in many respects, this tour is anything but elitist.

Wednesday's session is being watched by 100 fans who applaud the players as they emerge through the high fencing around the pitch.

Fifty won a lottery weighted towards the most loyal fans, and have each brought a friend or relative, with flights, accommodation and extra-curricular activities like Tuesday's trip to the local theme park paid for by Turkish media personality Ilcali.

When training finishes, the players lean across advertising hoardings to shake hands with the fans, sign autographs and pose for photos but soon everyone is on the pitch, milling around and chatting. Between selfies Ryan Giles is handing around one of many plates of baklava sponsors McVities have provided, like one of the waiters who were ferrying trays of teas.

It neatyl fits Ilicali’s vision for rebuilding this club, ploughing big money into expensive signings whilst offering cut-price tickets to supporters who drifted away in the apathy and anger that came before. His predecessors, the Allam family, took Hull into the Premier League twice, the FA Cup final and Europe but their relationship with supporters deteriorated from the moment in 2013 they tried to change the club's name to Hull Tigers.

"It felt like it was going down and down and once you lose the fans it's hard to get them back," says Debbie Arnold, an East Stand season ticket-holder from Hedon and part of a family of Hull supporters.

"Now the motto's 'One family, one dream' and it does feel like that – without sounding corny.

"This holiday, it's like you're with a load of friends you've just met. We've made friends here who were strangers before."

As she is at every home game, most away matches and lots of under-21 games, Debbie is with her dad, Trev, but this time not her grandson Harry, unable to come because he is only 11.

"I've been supporting Hull since 1951," says Trev, from Ryehill. "I remember when the Needler family were in charge but now it really is amazing.

"I don't know any other club that would do something like this. The treatment is unbelievable. I could never afford a holiday like this.

"All them years I've supported them you couldn't get near the players. You saw them on a Saturday but there was a distance."

Hull have become a club run by a genuine (albeit extremely rich) football fan for football fans.

"We came in because we were in love with English football," says Tan Kesler, Hull's vice-chairman and IIlicali's man on the ground in East Yorkshire. "We didn't come in with the mentality that we're going to make money out of this and sell it to somebody else. This needs to be maintained. This needs to be preserved.

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"I'm not crazy about social media but the other day I checked my Instagram messages. I read about a fan whose father was in a bad condition health-wise. He's a season-ticket holder who cannot come to the games so for the Leicester game we created a space for him to watch the game. The fan sent me pictures of his father, he was so pleased – almost in tears – to see his team.

"We want to make the fans part of it. The chairman put buses on for the away fans last season, it had no benefit for him but he wanted to create a supportive culture.

"I'm not surprised how quickly everything's happened because the work we've put into it isn't normal, I don't think."

A club which dipped into League One in 2020 and spent a couple of years trying to re-establish itself in the Championship is now three points outside the play-offs with nine matches to play, one more than sixth-placed Norwich City. The Arnolds have booked their Wembley hotel just in case.

"If you look where we were when Liam came in (in November 2022) and how we've progressed from then, it's a real success story," says Dawson proudly.

"It always takes time when there's new ownership but I think from players, to staff to fans, there's a real good feel-good factor. That's growing and growing and we've got a really exciting few weeks because of all the hard work everyone's put in.

"You can't achieve anything individually, you have to do it collectively. The more the fans feel part of it, the more we can do together."

The last game, at home to Leicester City, sold out – the club's biggest home gate since hosting Liverpool in February 2017 – and the next, at home to Stoke City on Good Friday, soon will. The hope is that matches against Middlesbrough, Queens Park Rangers, Ipswich Town and a play-off semi-final will too.

Although the new Hull is heavily reliant on Ilicali's chequebook it feels like they are trying to build something lasting, not simply import a new team.

"Harry goes to football training and when he first went all his pals seemed to have Liverpool and United shirts on and Harry always had his Hull City one on but now you do see a few more,” says Debbie.

Ilical's first transfer window was heavy on overseas players under new Georgian coach Shota Arveladze but Rosenior has Dawson on the coaching staff and plenty of East Yorkshire accents in the dressing room.

"I know Liam's not from Hull but he played for Hull, his nana's from Hull so it's like he'd got that connection," says Debbie. "I think that’s important. And it's not just him, there's players like Jacob Greaves, Matty Jacob, Harry Vaughan, Lewie Coyle and his younger brother Roco.

"When Acun first came in and they signed a lot of players from Turkey and places, you did wonder if they might lose a bit of that but they haven't."

Dawson sees it too.

"Success is built in different ways and Liam, Tan and the chairman have kept that community feel," he stresses. "The environment everybody tries to create is absolutely top.

"Wednesday was a fantastic day in terms of the club's evolution with fans, players and media on the pitch and that is Hull City. They're the building blocks to success.

"In my experience of the good times at this football club, we've always had that.

"There was a really good vibe around the place doing boxes in front of the fans having banter with the players (there is laughter from the fans when Greaves appeals to referee Dawson for a free-kick like it was the Champions League final, not a game of two-touch), cheering the goals in the small-sided games."

Ivor Pandur, a Croatian goalkeeper still to make his first-team debut after signing in January, is impressed by what he has come into.

"All of the people in this club are good people," he says. "You don't see it that often that everyone is good and genuine. This is what makes this team drive – good people, good characters who want the best for themselves and their careers but there is no jealousy, you don't see that a lot. I think this team can achieve so much."

As a football team still in the early stages of its development, Hull are far from perfect but as a club they are striking a good balance between the extraordinary and ordinary.

"I think we've created a good show in town" reflects Kesler. "If you had just put the show on, I don't think we'd have increased the number of fans that quickly but we've listened, we've talked.

"I'm a little bit of a shy person so I struggle to take compliments well but when the fans tell me how appreciative they are, I always say the truth – it's the chairman, it's his nature.

"I'm just trying to make sure the change is as quick and clean as possible."