At the age of fifty-four I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I sold the business that I had spent over twenty years building up to devote my time to following Hull City FC in their first ever season in the Premier League. The price that I took for my business, Chanterlands DIY in Hull, doesn't set me up for a life of Riley, far from it. In fact it wouldn't even pay off my mortgage, yet I had little choice. I have waited all of my life to see City play in the top flight. In over forty-odd years of support for the Tigers I have made many sacrifices to get to matches, mostly relegation dog-fights in front of three to four thousand similar die-hards and I would not have had it any other way. Hull City are my team and my support for them has never wavered and I didn't want to miss a second of our first season in the Premier League.

This is my first book on my lifetime obsession but I have been writing for fanzines, magazines and to the newspapers about City for over thirty years. Some people say I am biased and they are wrong, I am very biased but I would like you to judge for yourselves. My current pseudonym is Karl Berg, but over the years I have been many other people, Tom Watson, M. Mercer, E.G. Chaser, Paul Lighthouse, Bill Bore junior, Ken Clarkson, Buffalo Bill and the outlaw Joesey Wales to name just a few. I have even been known to use G. Clark on occasions. My subject is usually the same, I fight the corner for Hull City FC and their supporters. Before Adam Pearson gave us back our dignity we were the most downtrodden, ridiculed and underrated bunch of fans in the country.

Yet my belief always was that no other club in the land would have a hardcore following like ours if their trophy cabinet was as empty as ours had been for so long. I hear of the anguish that fans of Newcastle United, Leeds and Tottenham are supposed to go through, do me a favour, they should try following a club like Hull City! The same loyal following also changed the very destiny of this club on more than one occasion and it is to those long-suffering fans of Hull City that this book is dedicated. No one deserves today's success more than the supporters of the Tigers, in my eyes the best football supporters in the country.

Gary Clark