FOR some years I lived up near Hull. Not too close mind you, but near enough for me and my brother to trot in and watch Hull City football club on a regular basis.

That was in the mid-Sixties when there were still divisions one, two, three and four with no automatic promotion to this inner-sanctum for non-league clubs.

My brother still vaguely lives in that neck of the woods, is a season ticket holder for the Tigers and when I visit we endeavour to take in a match In our day though, Hull were in the Third Division and were usually involved in promotion battles. Match day at Boothferry Park was always an experience.

Corrugated walls and roof, the terraces, beer, dodgy meat pies, the east wind streaming in off the Humber to cut you in half and tannoys that crackled, squeaked and whistled but were largely useless.

Then there were the crowds - noisy, singing and surging - fans threading their way through the council estates and terraced houses to finally meet up from all directions at the ground.

All this is called atmosphere' and football is dead without it. The modern stadiums - even Hull has one now - maybe rather anaesthetised affairs these days, but they are still local'.

A lot of people buy English football clubs and think they actually own' them. They don't of course. These clubs really belong to the towns, cities and fans and are not the trinkets of the rich man.

A football club must have a soul and a heart and without a loyal fan base it of course has neither of these things.

Some of the teams that were in the first division in this era such as Blackpool, Northampton, Burnley, Nottingham Forest and Leyton Orient may have slipped behind the likes of Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea on the performance front, but they do have one thing in common.

A nucleus of fans who will always turn up to cheer them on.

Of course football has suffered from creeping commercialism for years and has seen players wages, transfer deals and ticket prices rocket into the financial stratosphere. The influx of foreign players in the top flight has arguably wrecked our national team, owners from abroad have been buying up the clubs and some clubs have become big business as they're floated on the stock exchange and have a very different army of fans' to satisfy.

But in the middle of all this the supporters still turn up to cheer on their team.

So who are the blinkered financial gurus in the Premier League who are proposing that some of the league games should be played at different venues around the world?

This crass idea emerged on Thursday and will be debated at the League's annual meeting in June. The plan is that venues will be able to bid for matches so that, say, Arsenal's league match against Chelsea could end up being played in Barcelona.

There is little doubt that this is nothing more than a money spinner, but it pays little regard to the fans and could start stripping the heart and soul out of the top flight clubs.

Hull City may be on the edge of a place in the play offs for the Premier League, but fans will be starting to wonder just how good a deal that is.