Pools v Cheltenham Preview

By Simian
April 27 2002

Cheltenham Town, after a great season which petered out in the final weeks, travel to the north-east to attempt to resurrect their promotion hopes. Awaiting them is the one and only, super confident, Hartlepool United and a full house.

Around the message boards you could be forgiven for thinking that the result is done and dusted. Off the back of 6 straight wins Hartlepool face a Cheltenham Town side who, lets face it, have thrown away automatic promotion. Wiser and older heads who have seen the disappointment of the past 2 years are keeping their boasts to a minimum.

I was at all four of the previous play-off games and was devastated 4 times. 12 months ago we faced a Blackpool side who had crept into the play-offs on goal difference after an atrocious start to the season. These upstarts had actually been bottom of the league at one stage! The league games had seen Hartlepool take 6 points of the seasiders. We on the other hand had been robbed of automatic promotion. This was going to be embarrassingly easy.....

We then had to go through the motions of the play-offs. A formality surely after all we were the class of the field!! Truth is, we were completely outplayed in both legs. The entire Hartlepool team's collective heads were down whilst Blackpool, who had put together a fantasic run-in played superbly. 2-5 to them. Does this build up sound familiar?

If we were play-off first timers I would already have booked tickets for Cardiff. But after Darlington and Blackpool I'm keeping fairly schtum.

Nevertheless I do believe that this is certainly do-able Cheltenham face an altogether different team than the one which they beat twice this year. And clearly the reverse is true.

Chris Turner won't be fooled by Steve Cotterill's poor attempt at Alex Fergusonisms. Ermm were going to leave out Alsop, our top scorer!

I feel that we must go for the throat and kill the tie at Victoria Park. 1 for Super Gord, 2 for Effion and one for Darryl. Of course we will gift them the now traditional consolation goal.

Hartlepool 4 Cheltenham 1

PS: Remember even if it all goes pear shaped, Chris Turner and the lads have given us a wonderful roller coaster season and we are more than prepared for next years campaign whether it be in Div 2 or Div 3. Those of us old enough to remember the pre Cyril days (I'm 37) know that in chris Turner we are fortunate enough to be witnessing a master at work. This is without any doubt the best Hartlepool United team in history.