By Albatross
November 17 2005

Hartlepool United have this afternoon confirmed what we all knew anyway: Ipswich Town attacker Dean McDonald is coming to Victoria Park on a month's loan. What took so long? So it's finally confirmed: McDonald is with us for a month, and goes straight into the squad for Saturday's visit to Gillingham. Joe Royle has stated that he's still part of his long-term plans though, so the chances of a permanent deal - or maybe even a longer loan deal - are not high.

The question in a way is "what's taken so long" - not in the actual bringing in of someone on loan, but in confirming the news. The Official Site has what sounds to me a somewhat sniffy paragraph on the end of it's article on the move about the Club's policy being not to release stories until they are definate; while that may be laudable, the fact of the matter is that in this case the news was "official" almost 24 hours ago, with Ipswich's official site releasing the information. Maybe they had jumped the gun - but it's not the first time Poolies have found news coming from other clubs before our own. For example, the appointment of Steve Agnew as assistant manager was released by Leeds several hours before Pools announced the news. Surely a little bit of contact between respective press officers to allow a synchronised announcement isn't too difficult?

Of course, unofficial sites such as Pools Online do have an edge on the Club site in some respects: while HUFC refuse to comment on speculation regarding signings and so on, no such policy has to apply to a fan-run site. Rest assured that we will continue to report on rumours and speculation, while of course making clear that's what they are ;-) I should stress though that I think the OS does a pretty good job for the most part, and the work that goes into Pools World in particular is to be applauded.

Back to the more important business though, and the arrival of McDonald should freshen up the Pools squad. He's played mainly as a winger but is believed to prefer playing up front, and at the moment that looks to be what we need. Will he turn out to be a Neill Collins or a Lewis Gobern? Let's hope it's the former!