QE A vs Hartlepool

The lads set off to Hartlepool FE, slightly disappointed by the lack of female companionship on the bus. However, buoyed by our excellent victory in the previous game against Wakefield, there was a good atmosphere in the dressing room despite Cookson’s poor choice of tunes. To further improve the mood- icon, leader and skipper Nathan Wright returned to the squad following his injury lay off the previous week. However he was kept out of the starting line up by our new midfield dynamo Hal Denny following an impressive display in the previous game. Mark named an unchanged XI in the hope we could build on our first victory of the season last week. We made an impressive start to the game and looked the superior side for the first 20 minutes; dangerous on the counter and the defence looked much more solid than in our previous league matches as a consequence of our clean sheet last week in the cup. Around the 20th minute mark, however, Hartlepool hit us with a quick counter down the left and it was finished well by their dangerous winger who was the main threat to us throughout the game. Despite this, we didn’t let our heads drop and Craig ‘Mop Head’ Edwards got through and continued his scoring streak with a quality left footed finish. But, disappointingly, we switched off again and Hartlepool scored from a quickly taken free kick which should have been cleared however goalkeeper Jacob Melling was disappointed to have not kept the fairly tame effort out. But to continue an enthralling first half, we scored once again! Josh Clark latched onto the end of an uncharacteristic killer through ball from centre half Alex Nelson and slotted calmly round their onrushing goalkeeper. On the brink of half time, pretty Yorkshire boy Tom Cookson appeared to pull his hamstring and limped off which meant Brad not so pretty Middleton had to be substituted on. Following his introduction he was presented with a couple of golden opportunities to give us an invaluable lead going into half time. However he struck them both straight at Hartlepool’s Craig Edwards look alike goalkeeper between the sticks, this earned him plenty of stick from the lads at half time (deservedly so). At half time, Mark Scott delivered his typically inspiring team talk and announced the Alex G would be replacing Batesy who’d had a difficult half dealing with their impressive winger in a hope that Nelly could move over and use his extra pace to nullify the threat. As usual, Mark’s team talk had the desired effect and we came out flying for the second half. The midfield, which contained Denny, Clark, Maddison and West, continued to work hard and they got their reward through Hal Denny himself. He burst through the Hartlepool defence and stayed on his feet despite their defender pulling his shirt and shorts on the way through to fire past Hartlepool’s very own mop head who’s positioning was very questionable. This further emphasised his impressive new lease of life as a central Midfielder following questions about his inclusion in the A team squad the previous week. He made sure Robyn was told about the goal on the way home. Following this goal Mark made a couple of changes, one of which was enforced as Nelly (who’d done a good job of marking their winger) hobbled off injured to be replaced by Batesy which meant we now had two injured gingers on the bench. The other change was to see the long awaited return of skipper Nath Wright in the hope of solidifying the midfield. However the changes didn’t really work and Hartlepool hit us with two quick goals to retake the lead for the first time in the second half. The first of which was as a result of a poor challenge from John Lorimer within the area, which meant they had a penalty which was placed right in the top corner. Following the penalty incident, Batesy had some kind words to say about the area of Hartlepool and was reprimanded by the referee. Unfortunately we lost our heads a bit and Hartlepool scored a well worked goal which meant the score was 4-3. The final 10 minutes were end to end and both sides looked like scoring. Following an extremely feisty period, John Lorimer went straight through the back of a Hartlepool midfielder and despite exclaiming how he was ‘so so so so so sorry’ and that ‘I didn’t mean it, promise’ the referee had no sympathy (probably because he’s ginger) and showed him a yellow card. John subsequently offered a handshake to their player however it was rejected and he was called ‘Ron Weasly’. From the resulting free kick, Jacob Melling pulled off an impressive double save to keep us in the game. Craig Edwards then scored past his counterpart at the other end which appeared to have levelled the game. However, the referee wrongly chalked it off and we failed to create any more chances in the last 5 minutes despite Matty Bell’s Iago Aspas esque corner. Consequently we went home with a disappointing result despite a decent performance in which we deserved at least a point and probably should have won. When asked to pick a man of the match, Hal Denny unsurprisingly picked his idol personal Robert West.