9 or 10 pts should get Spennymoor in play offs via goal difference.
Imagine Lees got a basic easy team talk of.

" If ya wanna be in the team for Wembley then show me how much"

, Anyhow good luck to them.
Would be a monumental achievement to go from Northern League to Division 5 in about a decade.

How embarrassing would it be if Spennymoor joined York Darlo n Gateshead to lift the FA Trophy before the mighty HUFC.

Shamefull


Maybe next season under proper leadership

Not at all, it's not as if they knocked us out or anything. Spennymoor have previously win the FA Vase too, good luck to them, Spike and the ex Pools players and staff.

Think that's a bit strong KPG- we've only had six seasons in this god awful league, so a lot less opportunity to win it. That's not to say we shouldn't have done better, in going deeper into the competition on each occasion, in the pursuit of a desperately sought after appearance at
Wembley.

We won it in our second full season at this level.

That's wonderful news, what a team, I'm as green as grass at such an achievement. Got to be worth a couple of renditions of Georgey Georgey - Show Us Your Scarf, for old times sake

To be fair I don't think the club have at any stage taken this competition seriously during our years in the NL. Escaping from this league has always been (rightly) given priority, consistently turning out weakened sides and giving youth an opportunity. I recall that when were in L2 when Darlo won the trophy it was universally dismissed and mocked by Poolies.

Aldershot 18000

Spennymoor 3800.

Good numbers.

For today's final 16:15pm ko

We fully fledged non league now.
So not respecting the FA Cup n Trophy is unacceptable financially and morally.

But what a great excuse for more failure.

Full root n branch new era required sharpish.


Lovely beer garden weather recently.
Yea

UTP
WSO.

pity its being broadcasted by my hated TNT channel thats far too expensive to stream for just one game.

we took the other trophy seriously enough and lost a wembley appearance with a penalty shoot out. just why cannot the club take our non league trophy as seriously. the sponsorship money in either is not great even for the winner but far better than going out in the first round. know money is important for pools but surely not the only reason to play.

I think the simple facts are we not good enough to win a trophy with this side. Teams even in lower leagues are capable on their day of raising their game to a level that we seemingly can't reach. We almost got their with Graeme Lee in fact we deserved too, but those days are long gone. We now need new owners who can invest in a squad that can maybe one day win something, no reason why we can't.

investment in the squad is fine if the new owners can find a better manager who can actually spend it. spenny might have a bit of cash at there level but doubt there opponents have much spare cash floating around though. for me aldershot are a southern version of pools which we seem to try and copy.

That Spenny total was from a few days ago and is pretty shite.

Come on “The Shots”

I can say that with impunity as back in the 70s, Aldershot was my closest club and we used to take the bus across to see them play - avoiding the local boot boys who weren’t bothered who they duffed up!

KO 4.15 TNT Sports 4.

So much for being the “pride of County Durham”.
Seems not enough sponsors to give discounted transport to entice the people who really couldn’t give a toss about them!
Even when Groves put on free buses to get them to Darlo they only brought a couple of hundred. They are just a northern league club punching above their weight based on the money chucked at them by a sugar daddy, seemingly to the detriment of the tax man who was ripped off when Groves last business empire went pop owing millions in tax……

prefer if i was a fan of them to have only proper fans around me and not a load of day trippers who have no idea which team they are supporting when they come out. might have been lucky at cardiff as i had what seemed to be proper poolies around me. this is certainly not always the case in finals which can be a nightmare for regulars.

They only have around 1k proper fans. Cup finals always bring out the people who usually don’t give a toss. Under 4k even with those is piss poor for the self proclaimed “pride”

Not so sure they've hot much money these days, they're definitely punching above their weight though. Think Loan Star is a teeny weeny bit envious of their near neighbours where going to Wembley and finished above Darlo again???
Good luck to them I say, every dog has it's day they say, hope it's theirs today.

I guess based on this thread Pools are no longer Darlington's rival?

Not jealous in the slightest. No different to me than Gateshead getting to the final last season. I’d be more jealous if you lot got there that’s for sure!
Spenny, to most Darlo fans, is like that irritating itchy arse you get if you don’t get all the crap off!

I agree, kev..this game must be huge for you.......I admire your honesty btw.

The last couple of weeks they've been picking on us,Ethel........i don't know what's going on. .

Oh look...the shit stirrer turns up!!!

The only decent thing about you is your tit's are on your back....shithouse.

The FA Trophy has been going for 55 years and after all that time there's barely half a dozen former winners in the EFL.

For as long as I can kid myself Pools are only visiting down here in non-league, I'll continue not to give a stuff about this competition or the prospect of a day out at Wembley playing the likes of North Ferriby or Hornchurch*

*both Trophy winners in the last 10 years.

would not mind thinking like that if we had won something available for us to win. that sounds like a fan from a club once in the premier league that still thinks there club should be there and not playing the likes of burton or wycombe and thinking the efl trophy is totally beneath them.

There's something available for us to win every season: PROMOTION.

Let's be greedy and go for both then.

as others have done and succeeded.

Steady now, Kevin will accuse you of being ambitious
Sorry Kevin.

That's the manager's call. The year we went up Challinor played the reserves and we went out in the first round. No arguments from me.

Standard procedure.
Ambition is of a higher grade

Pretty poor that a squad of professional footballers can only apparently manage to cope with a 46 game season. Tell those Aldershot fans it was a waste of effort getting to Wembley. What's wrong with giving your fans a bit of excitement? After all, it was apparent fairly early Pools weren't going up this season.

It's dead easy to say in hindsight that we already knew in early December that we weren't going up. Can you use your crystal ball to let us know if we're going out of business or not?

Going for promotion back to League 2 AND the FA Trophy sounds straightforward enough - till you realise the only team that's done the 'double' this millennium is Harrogate in 2020 - and they didn't have to play a 46 game season, it was stopped in March because of Covid. For that matter, the postponed Trophy final wasn't played till May 2021 - when they'd already been in League 2 for a season

Is it not a self-sustaining argument your using? How many of the promoted teams have had a proper go at the Trophy? How many used weakened teams a la Pools? Would they have still been promoted anyway - they have obviously got one of the best teams, would a handful of extra games have made any difference? And you can still get knocked out, even taking it seriously. And yes, i'd say it was obvious we weren't going up in December. Didn't need a crystal ball to see that.

I think 99 percent of fans knew we weren't going up in December. Most probobly worked it out in October that the team wasn't up to it. I don't think you needed a crystal ball to see our season was going nowhere, even if we had somehow managed to get to the play offs, the chance of us beating a york away and then winning couple other games were always going to be far fetched.

I don't know why some people deride the Trophy, it's a competition that non league teams can realistically win and surely one of the main aims of every serious football club is to win silverware. It's a cracking day out for fans as well.

And potentially a money spinner too.

Think it was the manager,s/coaches that were or are not up to it.
8Pts is feck all in this lge.

You're talking about different things there - getting to the play-offs and winning them. I'll be amazed if York or FGR don't take the second promotion spot. They've been streets ahead of the rest and one of them should go up - but football is a funny old game, as anyone who follows it knows very well.

The '99% knew we weren't going up' theory is pure bollocks. After Pools beat Oldham on New Year's day we were 3 points off a play-off place. Solihull were 6th in the table at the time - they finished 14th. Pools may have been flattering to deceive but at that point nobody was writing us off - least of all the 4,500 Pools and Oldham fans who were at the game.

Anyway, it's something to debate - that isn't politics! - while we wait to see if our club is going to fold.

There was a season when everyone in the world knew that Pools weren't going up by November.

November 1967...

Give over ! Pools were 9th at the time of the Oldham game, miles away from automatic promotion, and had played 3 games more than 2 of the clubs above them in play off spots, there was very little chance of making the play offs even then, only a deluded fool would think otherwise, especially given Pools history of crash and burns after Christmas holiday fixtures. That was as good as the season got, every supporter with an ounce of sense, knew it would probably be all downhill from then in, and so it proved.

Only at Pools would supporters diss a day out at Wembley in front of 38,000, probably more if Pools got there and the chance of a first real trophy. The club is a basket case.

Give over ! Pools were 9th at the time of the Oldham game, miles away from automatic promotion, and had played 3 games more than 2 of the clubs above them in play off spots, there was very little chance of making the play offs even then, only a deluded fool would think otherwise, especially given Pools history of crash and burns after Christmas holiday fixtures. That was as good as the season got, every supporter with an ounce of sense, knew it would probably be all downhill from then in, and so it proved.
[/quote]

Yep, Pools were 9th, 3 points behind Rochdale in 7th and 5 points behind Solihull in 6th. Rochdale had games in hand on us but Solihull didn't. Congratulations to all the wise after the event types who 'knew' the seson was over in December.

Yep, Pools were 9th, 3 points behind Rochdale in 7th and 5 points behind Solihull in 6th. Rochdale had games in hand on us but Solihull didn't. Congratulations to all the wise after the event types who 'knew' the seson was over in December.[/quote]

Ya could say June when Fergy/ Fevs got very lucky.
Sarly judging them from the promotion season 3 years earlier.

Anyhow water under the bridge now before the

It was over when they binned Philips and and screwed the continuity that builds good clubs.