Brown and Out in Edinburgh and Berwick

By Albatross
July 27 2005

Hartlepool United's friendlies last night saw one win, one defeat, and an injury to a player that had been making his way into the first team reckoning. Meanwhile, Friday's friendly with Newcastle may not have too many star names for the Magpies.

The two games last night came up with very different results: the first eleven losing 1-0 at Easter Road, while a youthful second string beat Berwick 4-2. In many ways though little can be read into either game - with the Scottish Season starting this weekend Hibs were bound to be a bit fitter even with a number of their own squad players involved. Meanwhile Berwick are not the strongest outfit in the Scottish Leagues...

There was positive and negative news last night though. First the positive: Darrell Clarke played at Berwick, scoring twice, and seems to be finally over his injury problems while Jack Wilkinson - another player who suffered through injury last season - also grabbed a goal. Up at Hibs Carl Jones fitted in well alongside Michael Nelson in the centre of defence and already looks capable of challenging for a first team place.

The bad news was for James Brown. The young forward has, like Jones, forced his way into first team contention during pre-season - but had to be taken off on a stretcher last night after damaging his knee. The club are waiting to find out how bad it is, and won't know for certain for a couple of days - but it looks set to keep Brown on the sidelines for a while just as he looked like making a real breakthrough.

Our next pre-season game in on Friday against Newcastle, who will hopefully send a stronger team to Victoria Park than Middlesbrough did. That may well depend on how things go tonight though: Toon are out in Spain to play Deportivo La Coruna in the Intertoto cup, and with the return leg next week their striker shortage may well mean that the likes of Shearer aren't risked. The signs aren't good - the highly-reliable unofficial site NUFC.Com lists the game as a fixture for their reserve team.....