As the man whose affinity with the Hull City fans and goal in the 2008 play-off final that took the club into the top division for the first time has made him the city's ultimate working class hero, Dean Windass is in a good position to comment on Phil Brown's infamous half‑time team‑talk at Eastlands last Boxing Day, not least because he was substituted in those 15 minutes.
This afternoon the club returns to Manchester City for the first time since Hull's players went into the break 4-0 down, and their manager decided to impart a rollicking on the pitch in front of the team's travelling fans.
The move failed, as Hull went on to lose 5-1. Their season subsequently unravelled, with only one more league victory and relegation avoided on the final day, confirming a prevailing view that the incident had been Brown's meltdown moment.
However, Windass, who was making his first start of the season that day, is dismissive of such an assessment. "I never thought of it that way. The players were disappointed because we were 4-0 down at half-time. Phil obviously took his frustrations out with what he did. But at that time the players didn't think that the gaffer was out of order.
"From my point of view I was disappointed the way that we were playing. It's like Wigan getting beaten 9-1, the players will be looking at themselves. If [the manager Roberto] Martínez would have taken them on the pitch at half-time the players wouldn't have thought, 'Oh the gaffer's out of order.' They'll be thinking, 'We've let the supporters down, I've let myself down, blah blah blah.'"
Windass, who left Hull in the summer and has now retired from playing, says the perception that Brown lost both the plot and his players was down to how the incident was viewed by the written press and television pundits.
"Until the media started going on about it the players didn't really give a toss," he said. "It was obviously when it came on Match of the Day and Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen were saying, 'Well, he'll lose the players now,' which I don't think he did."
Windass's view comes despite personal disappointment at being replaced by Brown. "I was the scapegoat who got dragged off. After Phil kept us on the pitch, we went back in the changing room. I thought, 'I didn't do bad there.' But he told me I was coming off. That's something that I've lived with all my life, I've always been a scapegoat but I've got on with it and proved people wrong."
A peripatetic 18-year, nine-club career took Windass around the lower leagues, plus a stop-off at Aberdeen, and, under Paul Jewell, he was a part of Bradford City's debut season in the Premier League 10 years ago.
There he learned, as Brown and his players had to last year, that the odd hammering is part of the deal in an inaugural season. "Paul Jewell said when we first got to the Premier League that sometimes you'll have to accept you're going to get beat four or five nil by good teams. It's how you respond," Windass says.
Recently, Brown has initiated a mini-revival, claiming seven of the last nine points to put the club in a healthy 15th position. Geovanni, once of City and who also played on Boxing Day, does not wish to relive those 90 minutes, nor what happened at half-time. "Each manager has their own personality," he said. "I know we didn't have a good experience there last season but you can leave that memory.
"It's in the past, it doesn't belong here and now. We have to fight for the points [today] – personally I don't like to remember the last game and I believe that this game will be totally different."
No one with any feeling for Hull will want a rude reminder this afternoon.