Holy Moly - punchless Pools dumped out of FA Cup

Players revelling in the Biblical names of Moses and Exodus put the FA Cup skids under Hartlepool United as Kettering boss Mark Cooper celebrated the second giant-killing of his career against the club he used to play for.

Moses Ashikodi scored the only goal of the game early on, and Exodus Geohaghon was the star of a hard-working defence as Pools battled to get back into the game.

There are always upsets in the FA Cup, and nobody should really be too surprised as results like this crop up year after year, but there really is no excuse for Pools.

They were beaten because Kettering did what was necessary on the day – they scored an early goal and then defied Pools to equalize.

And Chris Turner’s team weren’t good enough to meet the challenge. They can’t point to the absence of key players as excuses – the fact is that a team oif professionals from League One SHOULD  beat a team of non-League professionals and semi-professionals.

Kettering only rarely got into the Pools danger area, but on one of those occasions they scored and Pools paid the penalty.

Turner said he was gutted to go out of the Cup, but refused to criticise his players.

So if he won’t, we will. They were poor and showed just why our home form this season is rubbish.

Creating chances is all very well and so is making their keeper make some good saves.

But failing to score at home to a Blue Square team, even allowing for the fact that Kettering were massively psyched up for the game, is shameful.

The only consolation is that Pools can now concentrate on being average in the League.