absolute disgrace of a pitch,game should never have started nor should it have finished. by the second half the torquay end in particular was bottomless.
neither team could play footy but all credit to wilsons tactics as pools came out and give it everything from the off while conditions were only dreadful and could have been 2 up before the goal.then played possession.torquay were in it in the second half but never looked convincing.
james brown was fantastic in the first 45,bullock was everywhere and nelson was well .... nelson.a great team performance

Sounded like Dimi had a good game & saved us a few times - was this the case?

certainly he made a couple of good saves late on,not sure if they would have been on target as both were from an angle.don't think the defence could be blamed as the situation had reached sham status by then.they played the last 15 with 6 up front!!

someone said DW was in talks with "PUDDLE " about signing

Dawlish is right, the pitch was a disgrace and was surprised it got the go-ahead and even more surprised it finished.

Don’t get me wrong I’m delighted that it did go ahead ,we secured the three points after all, and to travel so far without even getting a match would have been unthinkable, I’d really like to think the referee took the distance that a lot of the away contingent had travelled into consideration when he made his decision.

But, the longer this match went on, the more of a farce it became, in the second half it was virtually impossible to pass the ball along the floor at all and I lost count at the amount of times that a player was tackled by the pitch when running with the ball.

It was hard work alright, a real leveller of a pitch if there ever was one.

I took this pic five minutes prior to kick off, before it became a mud bath.

I don't think the game should have been called off at all, the pitch was bad but it never became unplayable and largely for the 90 minutes both teams were able to play football on it. There were problems at times but nothing too severe. Torquay want a kicking for their 'attempt' at sorting the pitch out, exactly what is the point in sending 3 fifteen year old goons to walk round the pitch prodding their forks into the ground.

Dimi made some good saves and to be fair to Torquay, I can't think of many teams that have tested him like they did but they were never clear cut chances.

I thought Bullock was quiet as usual but thought Sweeney was fantastic in the middle, I was all for dropping him before the match and putting Boland in but it would be unfair to drop him after that. Man of the Match.

James Brown had a fantastic first half, what a player.

David Foley again was absolutely fecking fantastic, what a great sub he is to bring on against tiring old legs. He ran them ragged and deserved a goal.

At times it was like men against boys but we never got that important 2nd goal, we were good value for our 1-0 win in VERY hard conditions. A great but long day out!

The absence of Ben Clark actually weakened the midfield far more than the defence, Gary Liddle, as always, moved seamlessly into the back line, but his presence in midfield was missed, especially with the excellent Boland still missing

I agree with Tax Paying Poolie, Sweeney was tremendous, the engine that lad has is unbelievable, he just doesn’t stop running throughout the ninety minutes,
But, at times yesterday the lad was left with way too much to do, without a Liddle or Boland alongside him he had to work overtime.

As for James Brown, CLASS!!! The lad just keeps getting better and better by the game.

just out of interest.if yesterdays match had have been abandoned would we have got any money back? we didn't get and ticket stub or anything at the gate so I'm thinking we would have got nothing. anyone know what the rule is?

Once the match kicked off you were technically not allowed a refund regardless of how long had been played unless Torquay decided to refund of their own accord.

Going on to the state of the pitch i disagree with some points on here,firstly I have to say I thought it shouldn't have started,but once it did then in my opinion the pitch actually got no worse than it was at the kick off,and therefore the game should have been played to its conclusion.When i say no worse yes it cut up due to 22 players and a referee running all over it,but as far as surface water was concerned (even though it rained during game) it was no worse than when the game kicked off,for that reason and that reason only the referee could not abandon it as he would have had to say that he had made a mistake in actually kicking the game off.Now Im not one for praising referees but in this case in that he played the game to a conclusion,I think he should be congratulated,and it has nothing to do with the fact we won,at the end of the day the conditions were the same for both teams ,so if we had lost,i would have said the conditions helped us to lose but i wouldn't have been saying the game should have been called off or abandoned

I can remember far worse conditions in the 70's, even at top level (some memorable Match of the Day games spring to mind, remember Keith Weller playing for Leicester in about two foot of water on the wing)!!
If the ball rolls and bounces sufficiently then the game can continue. It makes football far more interesting and exciting for me when there is a game like that. If the day had been perfect with bowling green pitch, then Pools would probably have ran away with it. As it turned out, it gave Torquay a chance to compete, and gave Pools the chance to show we were up to the task in such adverse conditions. Yesterday told me more about Pools' fighting spirit than anything else - the extra confidence that will give the players is another edge in our psychological armoury. I'm pleased everyhting went the way it did, because Boston away will be the same and we know we can cope with it. We already knew we could outplay Torquay at football, it was the other stuff we needed to do yesterday and we did it.

At Bristol Rovers when the game got called off, we all got a refund and we didn't have a ticket then. I remember at the time there was some guy kicking off saying that it's a FL requirement to get a ticket as you come in

got to be a bit dodgy not getting a ticket hasn't it.I reckon most of the poolies would have been amazed at the official figure of 319 pools fans which got announced,it certainly felt and sounded like more. seemed to me like some garry gibson esque counting going on there

yep there was a decent amount in the seats possibly 70 80 in the official bit but when we scored I noticed that plenty more in the other areas were up celebrating

320 sounded about right to me, 270 behind the goal and 50 in the seats. I said about 300 after the match.

Just saw the highlights on PW.

What a dreadful wasted opportunity. They could never hope for a better set of conditions for the Helen Chamberlain mud wrestling challenge.