Game Fifty Three - Hartlepool Away

17 February 2009

And so here we go again, the second trip to Hartlepool of the season and a chance to extend the unbeaten run to 19 games and equal the club record for consecutive league games without defeat. The Johnstones Paint trip to Hartlepool back near the start of the season turned into one of the more memorable efforts from the season as everything from that night turned into something memorable, whether it be the journey with friends, the fun in the pub or the 3-0 win. All contributed to a great night!

But could this one match it? Well the lie in start to the day helped as I opted to take a days holiday for this one as it saved leaving at lunch and gave me a chance to enjoy the day fully. Leaving home in the late morning hours, I made my way over to Syston station to catch the train into town and then make my way over to the Walkers to meet up with the Fox Travel folk for the day: Me, Jodie, Helen and Colleen.

Despite it's northern position in the country, the journey up to Hartlepool didn't seem that long at all especially as we were all given a ridiculously tricky quiz to keep us entertained on the way. Whilst it started off as me and Jodie against Helen and her Mum, they soon joined up with us when they realised that about an hour into the thing, they'd only managed to answer about 3 questions... and some of those were wrong (Uttoxeter is NOT a football team for the record!)

We made our usual stop at the services which gave Jodie a chance to feed her gambling habbit at the bookies (who actually remembered her from when she made the trip in September - how the hell can the people working there remember that far back???). We also bumped into Jobber at the services who had come up in the car at some mammoth speed to catch us after leaving late in the afternoon.

After carrying on with the quiz and some recolections of days past with the resident historian Alan, we arrived in Hartlepool in decent time and found our way to the same pub as last time where we met up with Chloe, Joe B and Daggers from FoxesTalk and I also happened to run into an old friend Shiv, who I hadn't seen in a good couple of years - it's odd how you manage to see these people around just like with Sez at Arsenal earlier in the season!

We didn't stay in there long though as the place was rammed and we all headed out to the turnstiles to wait for the other lot as we had their tickets. While outside though, we had some great laughs, buy the biggest was reserved for the famous barking horse. You probably had to be there but we heard these dogs barking behind us, turned round and just saw these two horses nodding their heads in time with the noise. We were in fits of laughter... especially Jodie which just made us laugh further.

When the others finally arrived, we made our way in to find a place to stand for the evening and it was clear straight away that more fans had made the effort for the league clash then had for the cup adventure.

By pure coincidence, we ended up huddling together in a near identical spot to the last game and even found Micky Ruddle with a crazy collection of inflatables! Me and Joe B resorted to a game of head tennis with a beach ball to amuse ourselves although little dave wasn't amused when a large man moved in front of him blocking most of the view of the pitch.

The game started as quite a tight affair with neither team giving the other any time on the ball and no chance to create any efforts on goal. In fact it wasn't until after around 10 minutes that the first effort on goal was registered. A deep Oakley corner was headed goalwards by Brown but the keeper was equal to it and palmed it round the post.

City started to take a slight grip on the game and stroked the ball around quite nicely, with no better example of this coming with the first goal of the night. Some neat passing resulted in Oakley playing the ball through to Steve Howard who smashed it past the keeper at the near post. From our view point at the other end of the ground, we assumed it had gone wide so there was quite the delay before the celebrations really began.

Conceeding seemed to kickstart Hartlepool slightly and they forced a bit of pressure with a couple of corners but City debutant in goal Mark Bunn, was never called into any action.

5 minutes later though and he was soon facing his toughest test as Joel Porter slipped over in the box with the referee bizarrely pointing to the penalty spot to the disgust of the fuming fans behind the goal. How can he make such a crap mistake when it was clear that no contact was made?? Awful call! Anyhow, Porter picked himself up and smashed the penalty into the top corner - no keeper in the world would have saved that one. You can make out some of Ruddles inflatables as he tried to distract Porter in his run up.

Hartlepool were on top for the remainder of the first half as they pushed onwards sensing that an upset could be on the cards at the Victoria Ground.

At half time people just chatted about random stuff and waited for the players to emerge for the second half.

City started the second half strongly with Fryatt curling one just wide and Howard breaking through the defence, only to see the keeper save his shot when clear on goal - he probably should have scored in all honesty but you cannot fault the guy at the moment.

Hartlepool responded and had numerous efforts to take the lead with Bunn making a couple of good saves and an effort going just wide of the target. On 80 minutes though, the referee made up for his earlier cock up for the Hartlepool penalty by giving us a dodgy one too! Berner burst down the left and prodded the ball past the keeper, who promptly brought him down. The ball was already out of play but the ref had no hesitation on pointing to the spot and we rushed down to the front to get the best view of the penalty....

BANG. 2-1 and the sounds of "Super Stevie Howard!" rang out the away end At this point we really thought that we had the three points in the bag but as we moved into injury time, Andy Monkhouse popped up to volley home an unstoppable shot to snatch a point. To be honest it was no less that they deserved as a draw was about fair at the end of the day and we left the ground not too downhearted at the result.

Back on the coaches and we had the results of the earlier quiz with our team coming a respectable third so can't complain with that one really. The rest of the journey was spent being childish with cameras and taking embarrassing pictures of Helen.... I think that this one is the worst of the lot....

Got back to the Walkers in the early hours of Wednesday and jumped in a taxi back to Sunny Syston to grab some much needed sleep before work in the morning.

I must admit that I do now have a soft spot for Hartlepool after two great nights out there and it will be a shame that it looks like we won't be returning to that ground any time in the near future. In fact there's many grounds that we've discovered this season that I wouldnt mind going to again but in some respects I hope I wont have to! We're going through a slight dip in form though with so many draws but we did this earlier in the run of unbeaten games and we solved it with a good win over Bristol Rovers.... ironically our next opponents! Could they kick start us again......?