according to Reefmonkey;

Possibly the most famous game of Hartlepool Uniteds history happened on 5th January 1957 when the Manchester City came to Victoria Park in the 5th Round of the League Cup. Pools went down 1-0 in a drab affair, later in his autobiography then City boss Matt Busby declared the game "the worst he'd ever seen". In the future very few people in the town would claim to have attended this fixture.

In 1965 legendary former Newcastle striker Brian Clough was appointed manager he built one of the better teams in the clubs history before departing for Nottingham Forest. Clough was a dismal failure achieving little of note in the rest of his managerial career (a long spell at Leeds aside). He actually reapplied for the Pools job on several occasions but was knocked back with the club favoring Billy Horner and later Viv Busby for a spell in the Victoria Road hot seat.

In May 1968 Pools lost 2-0 at Cardiff to secure the clubs first relegation.

The 70's and 80's saw one of the most celebrated periods of the clubs history with crowds regularly topping a thousand. These halcyon days came to an abrupt end in October 1986 when the gates were locked at Victoria Road after the Pool were declared bankrupt. Pools are forced to play a fixture against Swansea City at Ayresome Park immediately after the niggers Cats home match with Stoke.

After the clubs reformation in 1986 Pools again started to go from strength to strength, even managing to avenge the 1957 defeat by Manchester City in a thumping 7-0 friendly win. This result was no surprise given City played former Scotland and Arsenal full back and soon to be Pools manager Cyril Knowles in goal.

In 1989 Chris Turner was appointed Pools manager building a promotion winning team, Viv Busby finished the job and lead the club into the third division. Under the shrewd chairmanship of Garry Gibson the club enjoyed a marvelous time in the 90's which brought memories back of those heady days of the 70's and 80's if only we could have an owner like Gary now.

In 1997 Cardiff based oil company IOR bought the club from the popular Gibson. What followed was one of the most uncertain periods of the clubs history. Two promotions, five play off campaigns, and more years outside of the basement division than the club had accumulated in it's previous 100 years plus £10,000,000 worth of investment aside these were some of the clubs most difficult times for the many ungrateful bitter and twisted fookers in the town itself who masquerade as fans. What could they moan about now? Gone were 6-0 and 8-1 home defeats, gone was the piss taking in the national and local media the club had actually became a respected one. The final straw came in January 2009 when they signed a young lad on loan from Watford instead of going toe to toe with Manchester United for Kaka, Gary Gibson would have.

Something like that anyway.

Its good to see constructive posts being made on this board

Newcastle striker Brian Clough

am i going mad or wasnt he with sunderland and the boro.

Some inaccuracies may be down to the fact I typed the full post from memory.

I don't need it, my fuel is 40 years of wanting Pools to lose.

post of the year so far

i have ruptured my sore throat in agreement

Perhaps if people went to so much effort in normal posts as oppose to ones designed to have a go at people, this board wouldnt be in such a mess.

Totally agree - strange how such posts are acceptable and those in which people merely express an honest opinion are seen as inflamatory

i remember when vince barker was on strictly come dancing....

Reef, I'll add complete lack of sense of humour to the list....

FFS it's just a joke, you know just a bit of fun after you got all those facts about Pools wrong yesterday!?

that may well be so and if thats the case then I take it in the way it was intended but after reading some of the posts on here regarding my thoughts on the hendo signing the last couple of days then I'm sure you can understand my cynacism

Cynacism doesn't sound like a South Yorkshire word

when I was about 8 or 9 and he's just taken over as chairman, we used to ask him to go and get the autographs of the players after the match, hand him our autograph books and he simply signed his own autograph and give us our books back!! Senile owld twat!!!

He was a great penalty taker though.

wasn't it him that tried to sell us out to Scarborough to give them league status a la MK Dongs and didnt his grandson play for us as centre half - Fagan?

i thought that was jeff goldblum...