According to 'Sir' John Hall...


Newcastle, at the time, was everybody's second club. That's what people on Tyneside want to see. If he can do that again, it just gives them hope.


Were they John, were they, were they, really John

Were they feck, you big crooked nosed Tory arsehole

My second club ia 5 iron.

I wouldn't want an "iron" any where near me especially behind me

I can remember my mate getting so irate with the Mail around 94/95 time, he phoned them up and blasted them for giving the Mags priority coverage in the sports pages. The reply from the Mail reporter on the other end of the phone basically translated as, " there are more Newcastle fans in Hartlepool than Hartlepool fans, so their sports coverage would reflect this."
The fact that they should have been promoting the town's only professional football club in its only realistic available media outlet, and the fact that the skunk scum could be read about in any national or regional paper at the time, seemed quite irrelevant to the man from the Mail. I refuse to acknowledge it as The Hartlepool Mail to this day, because it ceased to represent Hartlepool for me from that moment on. I still hold a serious grudge against that paper for its stance at that time.

PS it was around the time the scumbags threatened to win the premier league, so the Mail decided it would align itself with a potentially successful north eastern side in the top division, rather than Pools.
Wankcastle United (copyright Mr Groovy Crimes) - I hate, despise and detest the not nice people with a passion. THEY are the ones who would provide a real threat to Pools' future fan base if, hell forbid, they ever won anything.
They very nearly did back then, and I don't forget easily. I ended up in several pub fights at the time over this, and would probably do so again today if the same depth of feeling was re-kindled.
I've mellowed, but not to the extent I would let anything like that wash over me. They have been a joke for a few years and no threat to Pools fan base.
Watch the Mail in future weeks/months is all I'll say.
They helped to influence a lot of stupid people in this town back then, let's hope history does not repeat itself.