HARTLEY AND POOLE v COSMOPOLITAN COUNTY

 

On February 2nd 2013, Peter Hartley and James Poole each scored a goal in their club's 2-0 win over Notts County, watched by a few over 3,600. Yes, you guessed it, they were playing for Hartlepool United in League One.

The 'Pool squad, 18 of them, were all English in origin, bar Darren Holden who was from South Africa.

Hartlepool (the home of Andy Capp) consisted of: 2x Yorkshire lads from Rotherham, Barnsley, Pontefract, Sheffield, Leeds, 2 north-easterners from Tyneside, Wearside,  Billingham, Ashington (the home of the Charltons), North Shields, Stockton, Middlesbrough, Gateshead, Bishop Auckland and one from Stockport from the north-west. Oh and one from Redbridge....reference to yesterday's blog!!

The Notts County squad (18 of them) consisted of a Belgian, a German Goalkeeper, one from each of Northern Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, France and Algeria +  3 from Southern Ireland and 8 from England (Hitchin, Enfield, Kilburn, Croydon, Birmingham x 2, Nottingham Middlesbrough).

Total record: Notts County- won 16, Hartlepool won 12, Drawn 5.

First met: 21st September Div 4 HU 2 v NC 4 Att: 3,900 and both presently reside in the National League: Hartlepool 2nd in the division and Notts County 5th, three points behind.

The Monkey Hangers: Following on from the issue of rascist abuse (and others recently in football), Hartlepool United's nickname is the Monkey Hangers.

During the Napoleonic War, a French warship was found wrecked off the Hartlepool coast and when it was boarded by the locals, there were no Frenchmen alive apart from one individual that the locals assumed to be an French sailor. The individual was wearing a French naval uniform and didn't speak English, so he must have been a Frenchman. It was the ship's pet monkey, a mascot on the boat. The poor beast was taken ashore and because it didn't speak English, it couldn't defend itself and so was found guilty and hung as a French spy. The club  and town now have a team mascot called "H'Angus" and there are also various children's books, adult novels, songs and films with the Hartlepool monkey as the central theme. 

On the other hand Notts County are the Magpies for colourful reasons and are called "Notts" because they are "sited" outside the city region of Nottingham and therefore are in the "county of Nottinghamshire-Notts for short. Juventus chose their colours in 1903, inspired by the club's historic record.

CHEERS