2003/4 Season Review: December

By Albatross
June 4 2004

Hartlepool United continued to make an impression in the league, but it was potential FA Cup glory that had the whole town talking as we prepared to take on Sunderland. Marco Gabbiadini would though be absent from the field of play...

With our televised game with Burton the main source of conversation, some news that would prove to have major repercussions slipped by with less comment than might otherwise have been the case. Marco Gabbiadini was to have a knee operation; little did we know that Gabba had already played his last game for the club.

The buildup to the game with Burton was dominated by the name of Clough, and it seemed the BBC were expecting Pools to be sacrificial lambs in yet another great cup story in their buildup. Nigel this, Brian that, and oh yes, Hartlepool are in the top half of division two. The Brewers though were to prove no match for Pools: they concentrated almost exclusively on containing Pools, rarely committing players forward. Pools should have had a penalty when Eifion went down in the box; instead he got a yellow card after only the Ref and Neil Warnock thought he had taken a dive. Clough Senior looked to be in good health and good form at half time, but the second half proved to be more of the same until the winning goal arrived. A Nelson throughball found Tinkler in what Burton thought was an offside position but wasn't, and he unselfishly slid the ball into the path of debutant Joel Porter to finish with ease. The draw that followed gave Pools yet another good story: away to Sunderland. The following day the sound of bandwagons being jumped on could be heard all over Hartlepool...

Meanwhile there was still plenty of activity on the loan front. Marcus Richardson returned to Lincoln for a second spell, Mark Robinson joined Spennymoor - soon to be joined by Jermaine Easter - and someone else arrived. Chris Shuker joined from Man City, to take the right wing berth that Danny Byrne had proved to be ineffective in at the Vic. Shuker was to find himself thrown in at the deep end with a vengeance!

QPR had a home record the envy of anyone in the division, and showed why as they destroyed Pools. Kevin Gallen scored twice as Pools went in at the break 3-0 down, it was 4-0 shortly after half time, and while Pools carried on trying to attack the inability of Porter and the linesman to agree on what constituted offside meant that we never looked like pulling it back - though Eifion Williams did grab a consolation. Shuker must have wondered what he'd joined....

The next game saw Pools set a record, but the result was not what we wanted to see. Colchester were the visitors, but after an early sending off they shut up shop, put everyone behind the ball, and challenged Pools to break them down. It was a puzzle we couldn't solve, and we had to be grateful that Provett had stayed alert as he pulled off a good save late on to keep us level. It was our 28th consecutive home game without defeat - a new club record.

That record wasn't to grow further though. Barnsley were the Boxing Day party poopers, Kevin Betsy grabbing a brace as Pools were denied several clear penalties by the ref.

Our final game of the year was away to Oldham, and with Shuker having a good game Pools won 2-0 thanks to goals from Williams and Porter. Shuker, who had expressed the view that he didn't want to move so far away from Manchester, had quite a few people asking him to reconsider!

Pools finished 2003 in 11th place in Division 2, and life looked great. We had a cup tie with Sunderland to look forward to, and more than 9000 fans would be following the team to the Stadium of Light. Shuker looked like the answer to our problems on the right. The playoffs remained a possibility. Who wouldn't want to be a Poolie?