This year will mark 50 years of watching pools.
The first full match I saw was when my uncle took me along to the last match of the season against Swansea Town as they were called at the time.
The club had just secured promotion for the first time in their history & we won in front of a 11000 crowd.
Talk about getting a wrong impression.
To say the last few years have been dreadful & heartbreaking would be an understatement.

The club has reached the point were if it was a dog suffering as much you would do the kind thing and get it speedily put down.
The club from the top to the bottom is rotten, the one constant is the loyalty of the supporters.

It breaks my heart to say this but I hope the club folds all together & the sooner the better.
A new club will have to be born.

My recollection of that game was a 1-1 draw. Can't be arsed to look it up though.

Spot on.

Personally I'm not at all comfortable with all the threads and comments on here willing the present club into oblivion. Not least because some other fans are still desperately trying to do their bit to help the HUFC that has existed since 1908 to survive.

It's great (in a fairly small-minded way) to be able to say 'I told you so' when the 500-1 shot comes last, but it doesn't win any popularity contests.

It's hugely sensible for those active in the Trust to get on quietly with contingency planning for a community club. But nobody should be accused of trying to sabotage life-support efforts while the patient is still just about breathing (take a look at the other board if you want to know what I'm on about).

It truly is heartbreaking to see the mess the Club is in but I agree that liquidation and a clean start is the only realistic option. Others with fewer supporters have succeeded in running clubs owned by the fans so there is no good reason why the supporter's Trust shouldn't launch a new debt free club; it will still be Pools in my mind.

Hey Henrovian, you were right about Pools beating then Swansea Town 2-0 at the Vic in front of 11000 plus crowd. I was there too and you will remember a few days later the lads won 2-0 at The Veitch Field to clinch promotion for the first time. Keep the faith because its a big part of your life and with supporters like you The Dockers as i remember folk called them back then as well as Pools, will live on in some form. Hartlepool will always be Hartlepool long after the bunch of shites who have brought the club to it's knees have moved on.

Nobody is trying sabotage efforts to keep the club going, but it is hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel when the people running the club have said absolutely nothing about how they intend to pay wages and running costs in February March April May June and July.They have also said nothing about replacing a manager that looks from his latest interview like he is losing the will to live.
I donated to the Just Giving Fund a few weeks ago but after reading Musgraves statement I wont be giving any more money to the club. It is owned by a multi millionaire and he should be paying the staff he hired and the tax man.If he wasn't willing to pay them till the end of the contract he gave them he should not have hired them.The more money we give the more they will ask for !

Cant remember it ever been 500-1, yeah some people called it right whilst others season after season criticised the few of us who werent taken in, burying their heads in the sand, predicting promotion season after season and pretending everything was rosey in the garden.

But hey, lets just crack on shall we, what's done is done, we are were we are, lets put our differences to one side and fight to keep a decent standard of football in the town, whether in its current form or in a completely new guise.

Whilst the fund raising has been admirable, the 200 k was more or less reached by Wrexham game, Gofundme and the sale of simpson. It is unrealistic to expect us to keep bailing out the club for the rest of the season. Hopefully the extra time and publicity generated over the last month will attract a buyer (however unlikely given the takeover collapse). But I do believe it's time for all efforts to be geared towards preparing for the worse case scenario as it's pretty obvious it's the most likely outcome.

A few days EARLIER they had won at Vetch Field.

Have kept the faith for 50 years now, mostly through utter shite, I thought last season was bad but this is torture by a thousand cuts.
Me & my brother were 2 of the 800 odd in pools lowest home attendance ever.
I'm sure we won 3-0 it could have been against Scunthorpe back in the late 70's early 80's.
We were some of the biggest protestors to get Gary Gibson out of our club, he seems like a guardian angel compared to the bandits we've had in charge since IOR pulled out.

We definitely won against Swansea, as another post mentioned, both matches against them were 2-0 wins for Pools & played only a few days apart.
We clinched promotion at Swansea & a few days later it was like a carnival, I seem to remember Cliff Richard's 'Congratulations' being played 'ad nauseum'.

Scunthorpe , December 22 1973 800 odd . Lowest was v Stockport in 1984 790 odd

We defo beat Swansea 2-0 at the Vic in '68 a few days after winning by a similar scoreline at the Vetch Field to clinch promotion for the first time in the clubs history - I was there as a 12-year-old with my young cousin and we both nearly got crushed to death trying to get into the Mill House side of the ground among a near 12k attendance.

I was also there in the crowd of just 874 I think vs Scunny in '73 which I recall may have been played on a Sunday pm due to power cuts resulting from the greedy twat power workers going on strike. There was a sequence of Sunday games where we won 3-0 or 4-0 at home whilst losing the intermediate away games by similar scorelines. If I'm not mistaken this was during the Len Ashurst era with Kev McMahon and Mally Moore being our twin strikers. Those guys by no means world beaters but they were still light years in terms of ability and commitment ahead of the pretenders who undeservedly pull on a Pools shirt in 2018.

Was there v Stockport Friday night of I'm not mistaken my dad was part of the 100 club or whatever it was called met Roy hogan after the game..awestruck I was haha

Sure it was 0-0 as well worst game of football I remember seeing!

Scunthorpe game was a Saturday. We were bottom of the league and on a dreadful run. In the days before nearly every supporter had a season ticket, fans could vote with their feet, added to this weekend before xmas, which again before STs was a notoriously bad day for football crowds. We went on a great run after this and finished season strongly. That 73/74 team were as hard as nails but inconsistent, but unlike recent seasons were quite capable of going away to top of league side and getting a result.

It was the miners who were threatening to go on strike. and did so in January 74. hence glut of Sunday games, that attracted 5000 crowds and good results.. Miners wages for what they did, were appalling up until 1972, many left to work in factories because wages were more or less the same , but conditions were much better and work was easier. After the strike of 72 miners wages were on par with other workers and after 74 they may of been a little better than other workers, which considering what they did was no crime.

Power workers though are greedy twats, that's why they never go on strike , and because of the hold they would have over the country , they usually get well looked after anyway.

I think I mentioned on another thread ages ago I was at that game too, with my girlfriend of the time. That's nearly 0.5% of the entire crowd identified so far!

Sat in the Millhouse, cold pre-Christmas fixture, no atmosphere (as you might expect) but an easy win in the end.

Checking on ITMC, it was the start of a brilliant run that lifted Pools from the bottom to 8th by the beginning of April, promotion was in sight - and then drew 3, lost 4 of the last 7 fixtures!