Jan 25
I hadn’t had previously bothered with the Pizza 🍕 Trophy but in recent days the pepperoni started to stir and we could all see that arch in the close distance, but another collapse at the quarter final hurdle. We can’t even beat League Two opposition to make our first semi-final for 37 years.
Please click for moreFollowing on from the sad and unnecessary relegation of Leyton Orient, Jeff Stelling’s Hartlepool United joined them yesterday after a 96-year stay in the football league. This video clip encompassed every emotion that a football fan can go through. Jeff is a proper fan and in the early days of Soccer Saturday I was lucky enough to sit next to him at a friends’ birthday dinner and his passion for his hometown team and football in general was then pretty obvious way before he became one of the most famous faces in English football media.
There’s a lot to like Hartlepool United for. First of all their manager is Ronnie Moore.
Moore was a Rotherham legend in the 80’s, signed by Lennie Lawrence when we didn’t have a bean, with the fan’s contributing the bulk of the money. Somewhere in my parents loft is a certificate proclaiming that my £1 donation helped buy him.
Moore sacked by Tranmere Rovers last season due to illegal betting – he won £3.93 on an accumulator – took over at dead and buried Hartlepool United in December. Pool were 10 points adrift of safety in March with the Conference staring them in the face for the first time in their 94-year history.
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Charlton Athletic 0 Hartlepool United 0
A predictable indolent end to the season. It will be a joy knowing that I don’t have to tune into the radio on Saturday mornings.
Sadly the biggest talking point was the achilles injury to Jon Fortune, which forced him off on the half hour mark. Fortune has been dogged by injuries in recent years and on has not been the same player since his summer return to The Valley. One now wonders if he will play again.
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I almost forgot…. how could I? Saturday is the last game of the season and those going have my complete and utter admiration. Hartlepool United in 18th and Charlton in 14th has all the makings of a cracker. At least the sun might be out.
If we’d been a racehorse we would have been put down by now as we limp over the League One finish line. A truly miserable and let’s be honest, scandalous 46 games plus the odd two or three cup embarrassments thrown in for good measure.
Hartlepool United 2 Charlton Athletic 1
I tried very hard to ignore New York Addick’s unenthusiastic but veracious post after the win against Peterborough on Saturday. I have a tendency for my heart to rule my head, and I think a lot of us are in the same boat when it comes to Charlton at present. However tonight’s display- according to the radio anyhow – was nothing short of dismal.
It was painful listening to the Player commentary and for only a few minutes did we ever sound like we had any control of the game, and frustratingly it was at that point that Eccleston scored and a better team would have gone on to be easy winners, but we reverted back to type and continued to lack unison and ideas and it wasn’t a surprise that we fell behind again.
The radio commentator didn’t help my mood and I lost count of how many times he said that this was the 5th game on the trot that we had fallen behind! Mind you co-commentator Craig Hignett proffered some good observations but only helped to highlight our shortcomings.
Unsurprisingly tomorrow’s game at Hartlepool is one of 11 games called off in the country due to snow and frost. Pools have been on a good run, so maybe a long journey to the north-east is best avoided.
It wasn’t long ago that we were proclaiming that the players had played too many games, but by the time we take on Southampton on Boxing Day we would have had just 3 games in 30 days. In the previous 30 days, when we were knackered remember, we played 9 games and didn’t lose one.
Come Boxing Day we wouldn’t have scored in the league for over a month – Paul Benson’s tap in at home to Bristol Rovers the last. Anyway a more important statistic is that we will now have three games to re-arrange in the new year and our cup run will only add more congestion. That was a joke.
Sarasota, Florida
