Pools hopes high for new season

A year to go to the opening of the London Olympics, but the date for a much more important sporing event is a lot closer than that - the new 2011-12 Football League season kicks-off in just ten days, and Hartlepool United and their fans can hardly wait.

While it’s a year before we see London traffic grind to a halt, thousands of people battle to get to and from Olympic venues and the usual diet of despair and elation, all served up at once, the footy season will hopefully be a lot less traumatic.

Certainly, the 6,000-plus people who have bought Pools season tickets will be hoping so and the club will be keeping fingers crossed that the guaranteed bigger gates in the new season will see a winning team.

The usual season tickets sales are about 1,300, so that figure has virtually quadrupled thanks to the club’s £100-a-ticket deal, and when you add visiting fans and a few pay-on-the-day fans, Pools could be playing in front of 7,000 gates.

Not bad for a team that averaged less than 3,000 last season.

But while the tickets have been sold and the cash is presumably in the bank – or in the tea caddy on Ken Hodcroft’s mantelpiece – Pools do need to come up with something to go with the bigger crowds.

Success on the pitch.

Few who have shelled out the £100 will be expecting them to win the League One title, but they definitely will be hoping that the team will produce performances to go with the bigger gates.

Pools chief exec Russ Green told the Northern Echo: “It’s really got the town behind the club again.

“It’s been three or four years now of negativity - by addressing it we have everyone back onside.

“I always thought finances were the major reason why crowds have dipped. It’s expensive as a group or as a family to come to two or three games as week.

“It’s really got the town behind the club again.

“It’s been three or four years now of negativity, by addressing it we have everyone back on side.

“I always thought finances were the major reason why crowds have dipped. It’s expensive as a group or as a family to come to two or three games as week.

Now Green says other clubs are thinking about following the Pools example next year.

Meanwhile, Pools continue their pre-season build-up at Harrogate, where the team Mick Wadsworth plans to put out for the first half might be the one many fans would pick for the first day at MK Dons.

It is: Flinders, Austin, Collins, Hartley, Horwood, Solano, Sweeney, Liddle, Monkhouse, Nish, Boyd. Subs: Rafferty, Haslam, Humphreys, Murray, Luscombe, Pools, Brown.

Nathan Luscombe might have expected to be in after an impressive run lately, while the good news is that James Brown and Paul Murray are fit to be on the bench.