HartleyPoole make miracles look possible

One day somebody might invent a word to illustrate the unique circumstances of Hartlepool United's welcome home win over Notts County, their goals coming from Peter HARTLEY and James POOLE.

The spelling might be a little awry, but that was all that was wrong with this deserved 2-1 success, a feat that can only be repeated by a few teams.

Blackpool, Blackburn, Southampton, and one or two others might manage it one day, but don’t put any money on Arsenal ever doing what Pools did on Saturday.

It was also the first time they have won back to back games in a year and a half, thanks to the sort of performance that suggested they just night be making some progress.

Poole volleyed the first on five minutes and after Jamal Campbell-Ryce equalized early in the second half, Hartley scrambled in the winner.

With Gary Liddle back at Pools with his new club and not doing much against a side full of running, County deserved to lose even if it was only for the repulsive strip they wore (narrow black and orange hoops), but nothing will keep John Hughes from enjoying his first home win as Pools boss.

“It’s been a long time since we won at home, so to overcome that was important,” he told the club website.

“We’ll enjoy it, but we have to dust ourselves down and go again on Monday. We’ve not won a cup final, we’ve only won one of them and we have another 17 to go.

“One we showed that passion, effort, commitment, tackling and hounding, the fans got right behind us and it will top be like that now for the rest of the season.

“We’ve put ourselves in this position so we have to be man enough to get ourselves out of it.”

Hughes says there is a positivity about Victoria Park all of a sudden, and you only have to look at the League One table to see why … Pools are all of a sudden only two points behind Portsmouth and eight behind fifth bottom Oldham. Not long ago that gap was massive, now it’s closeable.

That miracle is beginning to look possible.