The Vital Hartlepool Editorial 17/12

Who said he's past it?

Saturday's performance just proved the doubters wrong yet again as Ritchie Humphreys turned in a man of the match performance.

Whenever the team plays badly fans always rush to slag him off and pick him out when he is rarely the worst offender. For some reason fans love to criticise our second longest standing player.

Robbie 'I used to play in the Premiership' Elliott showed with his performance what playing badly really is, that against a team that posed basically no attacking threat.

It does give Danny Wilson a selection headace for next weekend, i wouldn't want to see Humphreys moved but this means giving Elliott another game. We have Matty Robson but he is better in the left wing role than as a defender.

Uncle Ken won't be happy

After the recent string of dreadful performances the crowds have well and truly slumped.

With just 3915 on Saturday, it's 3 consecutive match where the attendance has failed to top 4000. I imagine the attendance will be significantly up over the festive period but Ken Hodcroft told the AGM last week that attendances had been 'disappointing'

The performance was good but we'll need to string a few of them together before people are truly convinced we've turned the corner.

A one man team

Another good point about Saturday's game was that it wasn't centred around James Brown.

I was delighted to see a good team performance without Browny playing particularly well.

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