By Albatross
January 20 2006

Hartlepool United have announced that young defender Darren Craddock is joining Conference side York City on a month's loan. Cradds has made just a handful of appearances for Pools this season, and will hope to be a regular at KitKat Crescent. Although Craddock has started games this season, he's not exactly been a regular - he's made seven starts, and the last time he made it onto the pitch was for the draw with Southend on 28th December. With Barron fit and Darren Williams available to cover at right back, it seems Pools have decided to let Craddock get some first team action elsewhere for a spell.

Craddock has played at centre half as well as right back, but his opportunities to play there have been limited. Since the start of the season Scott seems to have preferred to play Collins, Williams and now Nash alongside Nelson - and with Williams able to fill in both of Craddock's positions, Scott prefers to have the more experienced of the two on the bench.

Is there a chance this may become a permanent deal? Scott talks in the article on the official site of hoping this will aid his development, so maybe it's more a case of seeing how he shapes up with more regular football; but with a big squad currently the odds are that there will be a clearout of sorts in the summer and the likes of Craddock need to be comfortable in the first team if they're to be worth keeping on. Maybe the spell out on loan will show Pools that he is worth another year.