Nice one.
But they forgot to mention he also pulled Pruti,s pants down.

So sounds like he even had time for little gay flirtation before passing the ball into the bottom corner.

Any chance of a cut and paste? The article is behind a pay wall.

Desperation. You could smell it coming in waves from the North Sea, although that might have been the refinery. It was definitely there in the weird maudlin rendering of Rolf Harris’s lachrymose kiddie fiddling dirge, “Two Little Boys”, which has somehow become the Pooly faithful’s anthem.

It was there, too, in the ball hoofed into touch right from the kick-off and in the first booking, on four minutes, for Edon Pruti’s waist-high scything tackle. A sense of despair and impending doom somehow shackled the home players who, prior to this fixture had lost only once in eight games.

Trouble is, they had only won twice as well, having seemingly decided, unwisely, that drawing lots of games was their way out of difficulties.

At the start of play Hartlepool were three points behind Crawley Town with an inferior goal difference and thus en route to relegation back to the National League after an exquisitely brief stay in League Two. Nothing less than a win against their West Sussex rivals would suffice: they didn’t get it.

Hartlepool’s monkey had already ascended the gibbet and its head was in the noose.

All it needed was for Crawley’s top scorer Dom Telford to kick away the stool, which he did, once in the first half from a stooped header and then again, with a touch so sublime it seemed an affront and quite out of keeping with the rest of the proceedings, halfway through the second period.

In that overlong second half, the almost 7,000 sell-out crowd were silent save for the occasional bellowed oath. Their goose had been well and truly cooked by a Crawley side who were neater, sharper and in Telford possessed the one player on the pitch who did not treat the ball as a mortal enemy.

Back in the 1970s, Hartlepool were in this kind of position almost every season and dependant upon re-election for their survival. At a time when the likes of Chelsea were in the top 20 with the gloating and god awful Blue is the Colour, Hartlepool released their own single. It was called Never Say Diere and so far as I remember contained the rhyming couplet: “We’re not very flash and we’ve not got the cash, here at Hartlepool”. It had a pretty tune and it got nowhere.

When things got meritocratic and re-election was scrapped in favour of straight relegation and promotion, the writing was always on the wall for Pools, much as it was for their loathed Durham rivals, Darlington, who still flounder two divisions below the second tier. The only surprise, I suppose, was that Hartlepool’s relegation was so long in coming: they finally succumbed six years ago and spent four years trying to get out of the congested hell that is the National League.

Crawley, surprisingly, are the older of the two clubs, formed in 1896. They have spent most of their lives in the Southern League, or its earlier equivalents. But the demographics have been in Crawley’s favour – the vast and sprawling 1950s adjunct to a runway has thrived, much as have those other newish towns of the South East. The balance of power in football has for a long while been tilting towards the South East, where the money is. Just look at Bournemouth and Brighton.

Pools had reason for optimism: they haver been much improved since John Askey took over as manager a couple of months ago. They had two half decent players on display, the powerful Mohamed Sylla and the youngster Dan Dodds.

Much was expected, by the home crowd, of Josh Umerah — their top scorer with 15 goals this season. God knows who he has managed to score against, bless the bloke. Here he put it over the bar from one yard out, displaying the kind of panache the Pools faithful will be seeing week in week out next season. Still, at least he tried.

Pools’ real problem has been in defence. In the second half the entire home back line watched with a kind of rapt fascination as a punt down field from the very able Crawley keeper Corey Addai soared over their collective heads and onto the foot of the onrushing Telford who controlled, steadied himself, did some light shopping and took in a show, then slotted calmly home past Jakub Stolarczyk, and that was pretty much that.

Pools huffed a bit and Crawley’s players kept being afflicted with mysterious ailments and rolled around on the ground, as if someone had sprayed Novichok in their direction. But they needn’t have worried.

I sat next to a former Hartlepool great, the midfielder Tommy Miller. He gave me a Haribo and otherwise sat with his head in his hands.

How Hartlepool could have done with him today.

Cheers.

the demographics have changed alarmingly in the 100 years since the football league started with 4 divisions. the hotbed of football then was the north west and north east. just check on the clubs that have lost their league status in the early days of the game from these two areas and at least one new brighton do not exist anymore. if things had started now i feel the league would be full of crawleys, wokings and bromleys and the traditional old non league clubs like they are would be rochdale, darlo, pools and barrow.

That pretty much summed up the game I watched.

Pools needed something quicker acting than that to have a chance of scoring. Chloroform?

Bloke who wrote that is a condescending tit imo

I agree. Might have taken it a tad more seriously if he had done his research prior to telling us how many games Pools lost since the unbeaten run ended. I must say his description of the second goal was amusing.

Got to agree, it was obvious he turned up with the bog standard misconceptions of the place with his tiresome reference to the smell from the refinery, all the old cliches where brought and dusted down, more a lazy put down littered with the odd humorous though patronising comment than a balanced report.

These emerging London orbital clubs all seem to be embrassingly devoid of character and cast from the same mould that merges into one caricature of a team.
Faceless newcomers, who nearly all play to the same tired script of playing by numbers to siege football and basic narky tactics coupled with a talent for time wasting and injury feigning that has rose to acting award levels….. and soooooo bland they could swap names and we’d never know.

always expect a new team to be formed down there called maidenstone. might as well as i never knew the difference between maidstone or maidenhead. even the names of the towns they play in sound really grey, dorking, bromley, woking. ask someone where they are from and they say one of those you,d have to stifle a yawn.