Ern Shaw and Sport

The following is a quote from Ern Shaw’s book on how to become a sporting cartoonist:

“Sport offers a wonderful opportunity to the cartoonist, but to be successful, a highly developed sense of observation, ability and imagination are essential. No artist can hope to make a success of sports cartooning until he has learned to draw the human figure in action."

"I began by visiting a billiards hall and watching the players in their various poses. This being a slower game than, say football or boxing; I had the time to register a pose and make quick notes in my sketch book.
Once you have become proficient in drawing the human figure in action and posses, and the ability to make recognizable caricatures of sporting personalities, you will at least have laid the foundation to become a sports cartoonist.

The camera can record incidents, like the shooting of a goal or a brilliant save but the cartoonist can observe such incidents from the press box or stand, and perhaps give them a more humorous “twist” and produce a pictorial version which would prove very entertaining to newspaper readers.”

Ern Shaw and Hull City Football Club (also known as the Tigers)

The club was founded in Hull 1904 and played for the first three years at the Boulevard Rugby League ground. They eventually moved to the ground of Hull Cricket Club before moving to Boothferry Park.
Ern Shaw would pop into the Press-box among the sports writers for the home games at Boothferry Park and sit unobtrusively at the back of the box, turning out his cartoon masterpieces with consummate ease and the minimum of fuss.
Ern Shaw had a long association with the club and his earliest cartoons of two rather cuddly tigers in bow ties adorned the cover of the club’s match programme from 1913 to 1927.

He produced cartoons for the club’s programme and his cartoons also appeared in the ‘Tiger Mag’, a postwar magazine for the city fans. The ‘Tiger Mag’ was popular because it coincided with one of the most successful times in the club’s history-when they gained promotion as Third Division North Champions under Raich Carter’s management in 1948-49.

The club now plays their games at the 25,000 capacity Kingston Communications Stadium which they moved to in 2002 on the site of the former Cricket Club.
They traditionally play in black and amber, often with a striped shirt design, hence their nickname the ‘Tigers’
After a successful 2007/ 2008 season, they were promoted to the Premier League for the first time in their history via a 1-0 playoff win over Bristol City with a Dean Windass winning volley, under the management of Phil Brown and chairmanship of Paul Duffen.