Left To Plummet Without A Paddle

Who would take Pools over now?

- Nick Loughlin

ONE hundred and ten years of football, and it’s only taken two of them to take Hartlepool United to the brink.

The club, a North-East and lower league institution, is only hours away at any time from administration.

Up for sale, on the edge of a relegation scrap at the foot of the National League, owners who won’t put another penny into the club to keep it going and without any money in the bank to pay staff wages, these are the most troubled of times at Victoria Park.

Their first season in NonLeague football has proved a thousand times worse than anyone expected.

When Pools were sold in the summer of 2015, it was a debt free club. Owners Increased Oil Recovery had overseen the best of times at the club, when promotion and play-off campaigns were the norm.

But when the oil industry they were heavily involved in dried up, they needed a way out. And so the collapse started.

Along came, at first, a consortium by the name of TMH – The Monkey Hangers, in a quirky throwback to the town’s heritage.

Funny they were not. IOR and astute chairman Ken Hodcroft saw them off before the deal went through. At the back end of last year two of the would be buyers were jailed for fraud.