Here's The Chapter On Pools v Darlo From The Book....

MutleyRules · **Posted:** Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:09 pm

'Playing At Home'!!!! :grin:

Have a read....just ignore the usual errors and usual stereotyping....it's a great write-up!!!! :coool:

Hartlepool United v Darlington. Division 3. 7th February 1998. 2-2

'I've never said we would get promotion, but it is a realistic possibilty.' Mick Tait

During the Napoleonic wars, the ever-vigilant seafaring folk of Seaton Carew were never complacent enough to assume their hardy coastal village, now subsumed into Hartlepool ('the place were deer drink'), would not be Bonaparte's bridgehead for his inevitable invasion. These suspicions were confirmed one stormy night when a French ship ran aground. All hands were lost, except for the vessel's mascot, a monkey whom the assuming Gauls had dressed in military uniform. The little chap was taken to Hartlepool, tried and hanged as a French spy. The rest of Britain found out and laughed. Hartlepool has never recovered its self-esteem. never forget, though, that the monkey was guilty.

I like Hartlepool, birthtown of Wayne Sleep and Ridley Scott. Germans like it too, for it was the first place their warships shelled in World War I. It's only existed as a borough since 1967 when ancient Hartlepool (still the area to tread carefully in) around the Headland merged with the larger, Victorian boom-town of West Hartlepool to form one large, social-services stretching entity. Despite the collapse of the local shipbuilding industry, the sea air is bracing and Hartlepool is making an effort (I adore effort: dullards need all the help they can get; the average become above average and the brilliant become combustible with genius), trying to transcend a potentially fatal mix of deprivation and ridicule. So plasterers spend a hard-working Saturday lunchtime opposite the railway station, stuck up rickety scaffoloding like 21st century ragged-trousered philanthropists, a tribe whose number is inexorably growing. I'm fine, last night's Orient Burger hasn't made a reappearance.

No, there's more, much of it under the EC-Funded, cinema free Hartlepool Renaissance umbrella. An art gallery housed in an old church has an exhibition of cartoons, mainly by 81 year old Reg Smythe, creator of obvious fellow-Hartlepudlian Andy Capp. Smythe, bless him, still lives around Caledonian Road. There's a museum where it's only slightly patronising to be invited to lift sacks like real workers used to do. And instead of surrendering Hartlepool's quay and focal point to gangs of the dispossessed roaming the waste ground circling the quay's southern side, it's been rejuvenated with historical displays, ideal for kids' school outings, some shops and been given a sheen that a place like this needs so badly. if it doesn't work - and all this still might not be enough - they have tried. In a town with nothing save the scramble to get out, it is something. Individually built detached houses cost just £71,000 and it's illegal to drink alcohol in the streets.

Tony Blair's Sedgefield constituency is the other side of the A1 and Peter Mandelson is the town's MP, a Labour politician's job for life. It's an uneasy marriage. The locals tell one story, probably apocryphal, but the broadsheets print it from time to time and it's the new monkey-hanging legend. In a rare constituency visit, MP and handsome entourage go to a chip shop. Mandelson orders and then points at the mushy peas, saying 'and some of that guacamole dip, please'.

The football team are hopeless, of course. Always have been, always will be. In 1956/57 they finished runners-up in the old Division Three (North) in the days when only champions were promoted. In the january of that season the Busby Babes came to Victoria Park in the FA Cup. Oh, and Brian Clough began his managerial career here. That's all.

Today though is as special as it gets. Darlington have arrived in their N-reg Atkinsons of Northallerton coach, which has two lampless tables and the ubiquitous lower league coffee machine. Fine for a short hop north east, less so for Exeter.

There are many large ugly people both on the streets and in the packed Yate's where I take a pre-match beer. This might be Hartlepool's usual face to the world, but the police have not made this game - one which is more likely to feature Alan Shearer as a Darlington substitute than sell out - all ticket for nothing.

Victoria Park is to the North of the town, overlooking the refurbished quay and North Sea. From the Town End, my natural bounce is further lifted by the North Sea at rush hour and the sweary, shouty crowd. They sing 'Stan up if you hate hate Darlington', always funnier on a standing end. I laugh like a drain. Outside, clawing at the gates, there is a mass of under-twelves who have never had a full meal in their brief, unhappy lives. The pie upon which I munch sticks to its foil tray as if, perhaps, it had been overcooked. More than once.

It's a mid-table scrap, but Hartlepool have yet to lose at home (they have lost money at home though, a programme seller was robbed before the Macclesfield game and his wares sold cheaply in town; turnstile operators have also been targeted), while darlington have not won away. Victory for either might ease the dulling pain of Division Three mediocrity. Darlington have sold out the 740 capacity Rink End (any rink is long gone). Ignoring the pie-eating competition between a fat bastard supporter of each side goaded by a minor local radio celebrity, hartlepool fans sing 'The Rink End is full of shit', Darlington reply with 'Where's your monkey gone?'. Behind me at the back corner, are a trio of old, silent skinheads, dressed in black harrington jackets, the uniform of the far right, wearing no insignia save St.George's Cross badges. To amuse themselves, and themselves alone, they set fire to a Darlington scarf. If only it hadn't been them...

The first half runs to form, as predictable as the teams running out to 2 Unlimited's 'Get Ready For This'. hartlepool, with Strongarm upon their breasts, have the game's best player, Ian Clark, who inspires Jan Ove Pedersen to stroll through a dopey defence and tuck Richard Lucas's smart pass home. Clark himself scores the second in much the same way. There's a mass on-pitch brawl, which everyone enjoys, except the two booked Hartlepool players. All looks well by half-time, when a local theatre group brings a man dressed as a dinosaur into the centre circle and then promptly shoos him off.

I know things will be different in the second half from the moment un-nervingly breezy Darlington goalkeeper David Preece places his Lucozade Sport bottle in the corner of his goal in front of the Town End. A young kid, ten at the most, has spent his half-time saving up spittle. He showers Preece with hepatitis-ridden phlegm. Those behind him laugh rather too keenly and taunt Darlington's boss, 'Hodgson, give us a wave'. He doesn't.

Clark hobbles off and the game alters course in a minute. Paul Connor, on loan to Hartlepool from Middlesbrough, is felled in the penalty area. Referee Cain waves play on. The ball falls to plump substitute Stephen Halliday (nick-name:Jabba) who smacks it at Preece when it was easier to score. Dreadful Darlington rush up field and Darren Roberts heads in Simon Shaw's cross.

The celebratory atmosphere is replaced by tension. The chants switch to 'Fuck-Off Darlo' and, last heard in 1982, 'You're gonna get your fucking heads kicked in'. Everyone assumes an equaliser is coming and, with thirty seconds remaining, substitute Carl Shutt crosses low and Roberts pounces again to drive home. The Darlington players collapse in an orgiastic heap near their dugout. When the whistle goes, Preece looks up at the Town End and, half smirking, shrugs and claps as if to apologise. The spittle pours down on him and this time everyone (not me, obviously not me, it's disgusting) joins in. A steward escorts him away.

There is only one route, along Clarence Road, to the town centre and station. The police have blocked the road off in order to shepherd the Darlington fans back to the station. Hartlepool's fighters, 150 at the most, gather where Clarence Road meets the town centre. It's here that I finally understand the urchins outside the ground and spittle shower boy, for the oldest of these Bugsy Malones is no more than seventeen. Some of them, I swear, aren't secondary school yet. Hartlepool is planning for the future in every way.

I've had to hang back, too old and therefore too conspicuous to mingle. Mounted police prepare a passage for the Darlington fans by attempting to break up the tots, who scatter through the Middleton Grange shopping centre, traumatising pensioners with carrier bags and mothers with young children like it was the late-70's all over again. They regroup around the art gallery where, for once, the police have not planned ahead and stationed personnel. The teenies follow the chuckling Darlington fans toward the station, picking off stray and dawdlers along the way, but with insufficient venom to trouble local hospitals or juvenile courts. The laughing policemen at the railway station do the rest. In ten years, the youths will have realised fighting at football is more addictive than crack cocaine and Hartlepool will be a different proposition.

Before I depart, I sample Bikini's Fun Bar. There are no bikinis, it is not, in any way 'fun' and my dream of combining the two and finding Peter Mandelson in a bikini is a non-starter. An unfortunate couple seem to have held their wedding reception here this afternoon and some of the scraps of food they managed to afford remain uneaten. Evil children are ruling the place, drinking lemonade, playing pool and screeching at the top of their unbroken voices while their impotent parents sip cans of lager, smoke Embassy Regal and slyly stroke the top of each other's thighs. They're all married, but not necessarily to each other. I don't understand their rules and so I must leave them. They don't notice.

TforTurner · **Joined:** Wed Sep 03, 2008 12:37 pm **Posts:** 689

An interesting read.... A complete load of bollocks... but still, an interesting read :laugh:

Mick Tait's Head Bandage · **Posted:** Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:32 pm

Utter tosh :roll:

Yubep · **Joined:** Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:35 pm **Posts:** 25266

The question i have is, this guy came to an all ticket game so he must have bought a ticket.

Was he on the database?

Spender · **Posted:** Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:53 pm

Interesting to note that they've been playing that bloody 1992 pre-kick off song for ten years though eh??

Salty · **Posted:** Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:48 pm

patronising

katcha · **Posted:** Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:06 pm

it's hack prose of course it's patronising

Here's The Chapter On Pools v Darlo From The Book....

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