By Albatross
May 9 2003

Hartlepool United have had a tremendous 2002/3 season, so it's worth looking at in a bit of depth. So let's start at the beginning - August 2002. The campaign that was ultimately to lead us to promotion started at Carlisle. Our opponents were in some disarray: having finally got rid of the hated Michael Knighton, Roddy Collins had literally had days to pull together a team. There was a carnival atmosphere inside the ground, a bumper attendance - of home fans and Poolies - and a parade of former players including Jimmy Glass. None of this stopped Pools putting a damper on the home fans party: Tinks scored just before half time, and a goal just after the break from Ritchie and then another from Tinkler made the game safe. A late consolation from Wake was possibly more than the Cumbrians deserved: unsurprisingly, they looked like a scratch side that had never played together, mainly because they hadn't!

This actually put us top of the table, and I remember thinking that things were going to get an awful lot tougher. I wasn't wrong, but it took a lot longer than I thought....

A midweek home win over promoted Boston kept us leading the pack, Flash scoring twice, but things were about to come down to earth with a bump. We'd never beaten Macclesfield at home, and they pulled the trick on us again with a 2-0 win that saw Jermaine Easter come in for a lot of criticism after replacing Eifion early in the game. Pools were off the top.

Next up was the long trip to Torquay: the Devon team hadn't had the greatest of starts, but fancied themselves to do well. Humphreys put us ahead with a spectacular lob before one Marcus Richardson equalised; Mickey Barron was lucky to stay on the pitch though after grappling Bedeau. Instead it was Fowler of Torquay that walked, picking up his second booking after pushing at Barron in the aftermath.

A comfortable 2-0 win over Hull saw us climb up to second: Watson was looking in pretty good form, scoring his third of the season, and Eifion got his first of the campaign. While Pools were not hitting the heights of the previous season, we were getting the results: and this was proved the following Saturday. A superb strike from Watson was enough to earn Pools victory at Oxford, as Turner's team concentrated on keeping things tight away from home. We were back on top.

It was only on Goal Difference though, and it was York City that took the Manager of the Month award; a decision that attracted the ire of many Poolies. We were by definition the best team over the month; but that didn't seem to matter to the powers that be. Still, we'd had a great start to the season: promotion already looked to be well on course.