Hull FC waited 355 days for a home win. They tried all different sorts of methods, but it turns out all they needed were a couple of lucky mascots.
And for head coach John Cartwright, those mascots were very familiar: his two grandsons, Harlow and Tatem. In fact, for Cartwright, whose son Jed started in the back row for the first time in four months, Thursday night’s victory over Wakefield Trinity was very much a family affair, with his daughter and her partner flying in from Australia ahead of the clash.
The Cartwright clan proved to be the lucky charm Hull needed, with the club trying all sorts of ways to ‘exorcise’ their bad MKM Stadium luck. That bad luck had seen them go 12 months without a home win and less than a fortnight short of a full calendar year.
In that time, Hull played 11 times, losing ten games, with just a draw to show for their efforts. But now the tide has changed, with the Black and Whites digging deep to turn around a 10-0 half-time deficit into a 16-10 victory.
Speaking after the clash, Cartwright said in his post-match press conference: “My two little grandkids, Harlow and Tatem, were here. It was a big effort from my daughter and her husband to bring them over on a flight from Australia. It was a nightmare, I’m led to believe, but they’re here, and it being our first win in 12 months, I might keep them here.
“It is tough (being away from family), and it hits home when they’re here, I suppose. It was an emotional game, but just to see the crowd react the way it did.
“It was a really good crowd tonight for a Thursday night game—I don’t know many clubs that would get over 10,000 for that sort of fixture, but that was the most pleasing aspect of the win for me, just to be able to see the fans enjoy the win tonight, celebrate that, and enjoy the rest of the weekend as well.”
As for Hull’s exorcisms, they tried an away game routine ahead of last week’s game against St Helens, meeting at a hotel and having a team talk before heading to the stadium, akin to their travels on the road, where all ten of their previous victories had come. It didn’t work, with the squad going back to normal habits for the Wakefield clash.
It was something Jon Wilkin spoke of on Sky Sports. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” he said. “I’m not saying they had an exorcism here at the stadium, but you do get desperate after 12 months without a win.”
However, it was normal service for Hull this week, with Cartwright telling Hull Live: “We didn’t do it this week. We did it last week—just to get a sense of how the players felt about it. It wasn’t something they thought they needed again.
“If you keep doing the same thing, then you will keep getting the same result. It’s not smart, so we tried that last week, but we went back to normal this week. It just proves sometimes that you look for something that isn’t there.”
And as for Hull‘s win, which, due to a high first-half error count, was built on defence before three second-half tries sealed a courteous and gritty win, Cartwright added: “All that on the back of a short turnaround and lack of confidence.
“You can’t go out and tell the players to be confident; that doesn’t work—they’ve got to go out and earn that confidence in each other. On the back of the first half, that was going to be difficult to do, but they did it in the second half.
“We made 200 tackles in the first half—they made 100 tackles—you just can’t do that in the modern game and expect to win. If we went in at 4-0 at half-time, I thought that would be a win for us, as we were nowhere near where we needed to be, but that grit and character was there.”