Spennymoor get Easter for Christmas

By Albatross
December 19 2003

Hartlepool United have announced that forward Jermaine Easter will be joining his colleague Mark Robinson on loan at Unibond League side Spennymoor.

Easter's move out on loan is hardly a surprise - he has made just three sub appearances this season, the last of them in the debacle at Blackpool, and is another player to find himself overtaken in the pecking order as Cooper remodels his squad. He was rumoured to have been on trial at Hereford recently, but returned to score for the Reserves last week.

Is this a prelude to a possible move? I doubt it, if only because Easter is currently six months into a two year deal at Pools, and would have to take a significant pay cut to drop into the world of semi-pro football. Pools may of course make him an offer to pay up his contract - but I suspect Jermaine would want to be playing at least at Conference level.

In some ways Easter is a more infuriating player than Adam Boyd. He scores on a regular basis for the reserves - eight in eleven games so far this season alone - but looks a completely different player when there's anything at stake. In thirty sub appearances in the first team he's scored twice - both the final goal in thrashings where the result was already secure.

Towards the end of last season Mike Newell experimented with Easter by playing him wide on the right - where he showed some promise in the game against Rushden - and presumably on that basis offered him a new deal. However, Easter's face no longer seems to fit at the Vic, and we are left with a player that looks unlikely to make any sort of impact on the first team but who is still under contract for another eighteen months.

The spell at Spennymoor may be just what he needs - but it's getting close to being last chance saloon for Easter, and not just for his Pools career. If he can't score goals even at Unibond level, the chances of him getting another professional deal anywhere will be remote; but even a set of barnstorming displays may not be enough to salvage his Pools career. It looks suspiciously like his best hope is to make a real impact at the Brewery Field and hope that a Conference or Division 3 club spots him.

The club have also confirmed that Tony Williams will be returning from his loan spell at Swansea after their game tonight with Doncaster.