They say that God moves in mysterious ways, and many a City fan will testify to that. God gave us the entertainment of Reverend Allen Bagshawe’s one-man Christmas carol choir for many years. More recently, He acted as an agent to Jay-Jay Okocha when the Nigerian legend was pondering which club to treat to his ineffective tricks.

Jay-Jay’s time at Hull never really worked in the manner God intended, but there is a very good reason why we should forgive Him, and not just because it’s the Christian thing to do. For it was God who brought Stuart Elliott to Hull City, and without the Ulsterman, we might still be languishing in the lower leagues.

Stuart Elliott was born in a Troubles-ridden Belfast in 1978. While his religious beliefs weren’t to develop for a few years, his love of football was apparent from an early age as Stuart spent his formative years playing for youth teams down the city’s infamous Shankhill Road.

Despite a few early rejections (due to his lack of height) Stuart progressed to the Glentoran first team, while continuing with his day job as a window cleaner. His goalscoring form for Glentoran soon attracted the attention of scouts from the UK mainland, and before long Stuart was on his way to Motherwell for a fee of £100,000.

The move to Motherwell was no coincidence. Elliott had found God in his late teens, and belonged to a denomination that had three churches in the world: one in Belfast, one in Motherwell, and one in Hull… (more…)