Since Challinor arrived at the club, from the very start he appeared to morph himself into the very fibre of the club. Not since Neale Cooper have I seen a manager with the charisma to charm the fans and get them onboard. He put himself about and became Mr Hartlepool United on a mission, he was one of us, we’d follow him anywhere.
But, was that feeling really mutual, where we as fans seeing something in the bloke that we blew out of all proportion as it suited a ‘want’ we probably all had. The promotion probably confirmed our hopes and in true Monty Python style we thought he was now the Messiah and he thought he was just a manager doing a good job.
Did he really comprehend just how much he was appreciated by us. Did he see things how we saw them, he may not have, nothing wrong with that though.
Most mangers go and no one really cares and maybe that was partially how he saw it.
Don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

He did a job for us set us up well. Good management of most of the players good deals in the loan market. That’s what we paid him for. We had a fair slice of luck in the play offs. A kind referee in the final. He played his part no doubt. But the driving force for me is the chairman land the fans. And no I don’t know him. If a player or manager wants to leave a club it is usually for money and no sensible way for a club to stop them. Challinor, Oates and other players before them. There will be managers wanting to come here because of the support Challinor clearly received from the chairman and the fans. We’ll take the next manager to our hearts if they have the right approach and if they are fist pumping after victories that would be ideal. We move on.

Maybe we put him on pedestal and didn’t realise he was up there.
Ah well, just another name for the record book.

I saw on FB that Rob McKinnon says DC and Raj weren’t seeing eye to eye. We’ll never know why but if DC was talking to Stockport for weeks how do we know he wasn’t manufacturing that situation. If he wasn’t happy with what had been agreed he should have walked away earlier. Was he using interest from other clubs to argue for more money? Whatever the issues it isn’t fair to pin this on Raj in my opinion. Perhaps he will let us know when we have a new manager in place and they have settled in. You need short memories in football sometimes. The concern is if they can take our manager they can take our better players. Raj couldn’t really stop that either. We don’t have an unlimited budget. Hopefully players will want to stay or we can continue to try and find players originally from around the local area who want to be here. I’m sure recruitment wasn’t 100% DC’s decision?

If it wasn’t for Raj this discussion wouldn’t be taking place. No one else was beating a path to our door, we’d have folded.
Yet, people who would struggle to run a market stall freely advise chairmen to splash the cash and go for broke with someone else’s money.
The word ‘budget’ is a word they have difficulty understanding, but it’s not their money so who cares which pan the cash is flushed down .
Me dad always said “There’s always an Eskimo ready to advise an African on how to cope with the heat.......”

Good management, some players on fire, support from the chairman, a wolf pack, some excellent supporting players, great fans, a dodgy referee and huge amounts of luck.
I wonder if dave believes he was the only reason we went up. He'll be lucky to have the stars align like that again this season.

Greetings Poolies, County fan in peace here (puts tin hat on as i'm fully aware of the animosity towards us at the mo)

Not here to gloat or on a wind up, totally understand your anger to the D.C. situation, if the shoe was on the other foot we'd react exactly the same way. Doesn't matter what club you support we're football fans & in the main wired up the same way!

The scenario that has occurred is probably a rarity for both clubs. I can't remember us in the time i've followed County ever poaching someone else's manager, we usually get someone in who's out of work or we give someone a shot at becoming a manager (which 99% of the time ends in abject failure much like our most recent attempt). I'm pretty sure that in Hartlepool's history you haven't had many (if any?) managers poached due the success they've enjoyed with Hartlepool? We're pretty much in the same boat with you there too due to both clubs in the main being pretty shit for the most part of our histories! Apart from our version of Dave Jones 24 years ago when believe it or not he was a decent manager, you'd have to go back to Colin Murphy in the 80's who buggered off to Lincoln taking half our team with him after saving us from the drop. We sang hate filled songs dedicated to Murphy for years after that & for a good while held a good degree of bitterness towards Lincoln, so I understand completely our name being mud in your part of the north east.

As for D.C. coming back & taking his pick of your players I don't think it will happen. I imagine Raj will put a 12 month block on that included in any compo terms & also we have a large squad of players on ridiculous contracts for the National league, including some players who have dropped from leagues 1 & 2 that can't even get in the team. D.C's task will be to get our very expensively assembled bunch of misfits to actually gel together as a team (or ship them out if they continue to under perform as they have done so far).

When you beat us in the play-offs last season it came as no surprise to me, Our record going into them flattered to deceive, Under our previous manager we were boring & one dimensional. The best team won on the day & i'd go as far to say once we missed the two guilt edged chances we had, it was a stroll in the park for your boys, hence Challinor sitting there with his arms folded with a smug look of relaxed satisfaction for most of the game. Glad you went up at the expense of 'fergie time' Torquay too.

I've got to be honest & say I'm pleased we've got a manager of Challinor's abilities in after the boredom that Simon Rusk has inflicted on us, Sorry it's happened the way it has but i guess that's modern football for you not much loyalty left in the game nowadays apart from the fans.

This may be my first post on this board but have in years past enjoyed reading your musings, plenty of gallows humour that can only be found at clubs like ours who have spent the best part of our histories at the arse end of football (& beyond in County's case, 6 years in the NLN....shiver) We may have new found wealth & with that a bit billy big bollocks attitude starts to creep in with some, but in the main, especially with us older fans it pays to stay a bit humble as football as we all know has a nasty habit of biting you on the arse!

I'm sure many of you wish us abject failure forever more & much like our experience with Murphy & Lincoln I get that, but i sincerely hope you get the right replacement & you continue to progress as a club. All the best for the rest of the season & hopefully see you soon again in league football...... Probably after Challinor's got us promoted but then buggered off to somewhere like Tranmere professing it was always his dream to manage the club he played for, for so long or something like that!

This.Certain posters on various forums seem to have a dislike for Raj,no matter what he does.
Criticising him for not splashing the cash,being one of the reasons Challinor left,while completely ignoring the fact that Raj brought him here when he out of work.

Scfc73. How can you stomach that Simon Wilson bloke?

A very reasoned post Mr 73 & a nice break from some of the bile spouted on here ( from both sets of fans ).
Don't know if it counts as "poaching", but ever heard of a bloke called Brian Clough ?

Chris Turner went to Sheff Wed after a successful spell and going back a very long way, Len Ashurst went to Gillingham following relative success in that he saved us from a bottom four finish. On the whole most of our past managers have been sacked so seeing one "poached" is a novel, though no less bitter experience.

scfc73 off the yellow board if I’m not mistaken. A very fair summary of the situation, I thank you for your post giving us a more adult view. It never hurts to listen what the more sensible fans think.

He's not liked to put it it politely! & if anyone's to blame for this whole scenario you could probably point the finger at him. We hold him responsible for getting rid of a club legend in Jim Gannon, slyly during the covid non attendance period so there was no physical backlash from fans at a match. We were sitting 3rd (or 4th?) in the table, although we hadn't been amazing to that point ( we took a good hiding at your place under Jim earlier in the season) but were steadily improving & closing the gap on the leaders slowly & surely. We'd just lost 1-0 in the cup to West Ham but held our own for 80 minutes or so, Wilson at that point was praising Gannon, a week later we win at Dagenham & then out of the blue Jim was sacked for 'cultural reasons' which to this day remained unexplained, but as fans we take 'cultural reasons' to mean he wouldn't do Wilson's bidding & was his own man so Wilson got rid of Gannon who bleeds County & is regarded as one of our own for the service as a player & his 3 spells as manager. He then replaces him with his mate Simon Rusk who had no 1st experience whatsoever (Brighton U-23 coach), no-one wanted Rusk to fail as no-one in their right mind wants their own team to lose but as a fanbase we never really took to him a) beacause his football was really mind numbingly boring & b) because the majority of our fanbase were angry at the dismissal of Jim Gannon, & the majority still are!

If Wilson hadn't made that unfathomable decision Dave Challinor would still be Hartlepool manager & we'd still be happy making sensible progression with Jimbo. On the flip side though the irony is maybe Wilson at that point did your cause a favour because if Gannon was still manager we wouldn't have loaned Ritchie Bennett to a promotion rival & despite taking a beating off you earlier under Gannon I'd have felt more confident in the playoffs with him at the helm rather than the clueless Rusk, funny old game innit!

Great post.

He sounds a very fickle ‘character’. What the hell are ‘cultural reasons’, was he supposed to dress as some Victorian mill worker and wear clogs. That’s one to baffle any personnel department.
Trouble is, if he’s that flighty, he’ll end up wanting to meddle in places he has no right to be. Worry when he’s sat on the team bench during a match.

@ Snowy, yep scfc73 on yellowboard. Cheers for your toleration & apologies for the wind up merchants. I'm all for a bit of jousting & friendly banter it's part pf the fun of football, but there's a time & place for it, coming on another teams message board when up to this point there had been no particular rivalry between us & gloating about the situation is poor taste in my book. If we'd had fans coming on our sites gloating about Jim Gannon being sacked our place would of been apocalyptic!

@ Ozzy - Funny how fans see managers differently or how they perform differently at other clubs, always remember Chris Turner doing a decent job at your place & being quite optimistic when he took the reigns at County, he was abysmal for us! a 6-0 away defeat to Macclesfield will live long in our memories! Same with Dave Jones, revered down here despised up your end!

@ Kit Kat Kid - Brian Clough, absolute legend. Don't make them like him anymore! Completely forgot he started at Hartlepool!

Cheers fella's

Thanks for the post scfc73. I think DC took his opportunity well. We had a huge slice of luck in the playoff final. I felt sorry for Torquay. Ultimately the referee helped us a lot that day. I don’t think DC offered more tactically than Torquay. I won’t forget we were fortunate. It all came together. I don’t wish Stockport any long term ill will. The way he left is disappointing but it usually is. We expected him to leave at some point but to a bigger club than Stockport. No offence meant but some of your fans are claiming you are a ‘big club’ when you are at the moment well financed and talking the talk in some respects. So long term good luck to you. You’ll need it to get out of that league for sure. We are grateful for DC’s contribution in our promotion. I’m interested to see how he deals with the personalities at Stockport. And the owner. I thought he’d get more than a 2.5 year deal to be honest. Shit or bust in some respects I feel. Like you say he’ll talk the talk and walk when it suits him. In the shorter term I hope you have a really good season and then covolan (at that point on loan to the opposition from port vale spanks in a 37 yard top corner volley 59 seconds in to the final 7th minute of added on time to shatter DC’s EFL dreams. It’s not entirely personal to DC or SCFC but he really does deserve some luck that lad. Other than that all the very best!

We're still scratching our heads at that one too! Supposedly Our wealthy new owner wouldn't be with us if it wasn't for Wilson as he introduced Mark Stott to the club (Despite Mark Stott being brought up 2 miles down the road from our ground?????) We get the impression that Wilson was playing football manager on his laptop then fancied a crack at the real deal, put his mate Rusk in charge who was basically his puppet. To be fair he seems to have a lot of contacts & on paper has brought some good players in but none of them have really worked out as of yet. I think in the case of Challinor's appointment though Wilson has had his wings clipped a bit & it's probably more the influence of our new non executive chairman we've brought in from Everton. I can't see Challinor letting Wilson play footy manager either. Still, like i said before this whole scenario has played out through his decision to fire Gannon.

I'm more old school & these directors of football don't sit well with me all they seem to do at any club is meddle in things they shouldn't then never take any flak when things go wrong!, I'm all for my club progressing & suppose you have to move with the times but it seems like overkill for the bloody National league! You proved yourselves that you don't really need all that crap to get out of this hell hole of a league, just a decent manager, and a team that works well as a unit.

Cheers Double figures. I've been a County fan long enough to know that scenario you painted at the end of your post could very well play out!

I like you, you’ve raised a point that has been one of my pet hates for years, all these poncey titles and non jobs to add confusion to to the minefield job of management.
I believe in a manager who manages and all other staff on the team side are under his complete control. Then, if things go tits up, he carry’s the can and if he does well he gets the plaudits, not the ‘Director of recruitment, paper clips and staples’
The ludicrous scenario where the manager has no say in which players are bought because some ‘Director of Sport’ ( ex photo copier salesman mate of owner) liked them and the manager has to make something of them is pure unadulterated bollocks and that’s swearing to it. In a lot of clubs you get the impression the mangers there to carry the can for others mistakes ..a bit like driving a car and only being in charge of the clutch, heater and air freshener ( Arctic Forest)

its all fine if you can equate success at a club to the number of backroom staff a club has. if the money gets tight i imagine many of these roles would be didpensed with anyone noticing if the team on the pitch has got worse. bit like white collar council jobs that have gone without residents being really hurt by it. years ago the new position of goalkeeping coach was thought up and as we know the standard of goalkeeping in this country has actually dropped. watching the EFL goals on saturday night is a proof of this.

Wasn't Pam "director of football" in the heady era of Coxhall and JPNG?

John Bird was "poached" by York City.

All those new signings in our first season down were dire. I don’t see them as Craig Harrison’s signings and can only assume they were signed by someone else.
Now why would that be?...
With hindsight, I’m more convinced than ever that if ever a bloke was regally shafted it was Craig Harrison.

This.

Craig won the League of Wales four times before Hartlepool and twice after with a different team.

Is winning the League of Wales comparable to being a successful manager in the National League? Some would argue it is not.

Look at Challinor's record - where did he start?

That’s not the point I was making. I’m referring to the way he was treat and not allowed to manage when you find a load of old cart horses not of your choosing dumped on your lap, even Challinor would have had them down the glue factory sharpish.