Joel - 2 goals

By Clarence Rode
April 5 2009

With no thanks to an awful defensive display, Hartlepool won their most important game of the season at the Vic. Now they go on to another most important game of the season as they face Crewe next weekend. If they play as badly as they did against a Hereford side now apparently doomed to the drop, they'll probably lose.

The 4-2 scoreline doesn't look bad, the three points make their situation look a lot more hopeful neat the bottom of League One and there were brilliant performances from Joel Porter and Tony Sweeney.
But the defence was crap.
In fact, at times they weren't that good.
Michael Nelson (right) and Sam Collins looked like a pair of strangers playing their first games in League football, and the nerves gradually spread throughout the team.
Porter did his bit with two early goals, one of them a lucky penner, but each time he scored the defence gave one away, and then spent most of the rest of the game threatening to do it again and again.
When the tricky Julien Brandy ran at them, Nelson and Collins looked panic-stricken and their attempts to stop him at times bordered on the farcical. If it wasn't so serious, you'd be tempted to laugh.
They and keeper Jan Budtz appeared to lack understanding, though Budtz did come to the team's rescue once or twice with good saves.
If Pools had been playing anything like a good side, they would almost certainly have lost. Thank goodness Hereford weren't anything like a good side.
Pools go to Crewe next weekend for another six-pointer, and the hoime team will kinow that if they run at the defence with the ball at their feet, they can cause chaos.
Good players appear to have become poor ones and Pools are going to need luck to survive a crisis which has only been eased with Saturday's win. It certainly hasn't been solved.
Whatever happens at the end opf this season and whoeever is manager for next season, a rebuilding job is needed, starting at the back.
But perhapos even more worrying is the fact that Porter is probably going home to Australia - he will be virtually impossible to replace.