Turn on Radio 5 or Talksport today and probably tomorrow, to hear famous players such as Geoff Hurst asking the football community to support HUFC, a club in financial turmoil.
The present club owner wants his money back (£1.8 million) and the supporters are wishing for sustainability, with a backer who has the long term future of the club as his main interest. Think about Leyton Orient and a few other clubs that have "gone to the wall" recently, but bounced back.
On the club website there are a number of initiatives representing the community, a town well known for Andy Capp, Jeff Stelling and H'Angus the Monkey. Hartlepool United FC is no longer "united" and certainly has a monkey on its back.
Community ventures abound, with reduced price hospitality available for league games, a legends night at £10 per head, coming to meet Micky Barron and Ritchie Humphreys who together played 1000+ games for the Us.
There is a Junior Q and A with the manager, a Man's Mental Health group sparked off by a National Citizens' Service Programme following on from the tragic suicide of Luke Ambler's brother-in-law, Andy Roberts. There is a Nostalgia Night celebrating the promotion in 1990/1 and a Friends of HUFC 1908 Promotion Group. The club was founded in 1908 as Hartlepools United Football Athletic Company, having proved its worth by winning the FA Amateur Cup in 1904-5 as West Hartlepool.
Pam Duxbury, the club's Chief Executive, is calling the shots, trying hard to keep the club afloat.
Playing in the Vanarama National League, Pool lost their most recent game to Dagenham and Redbridge, another fallen Football League club, a lie 17th out of 24 in the division (with a game in hand), just below FC Halifax and above Gateshead and Orient. There are 13 past league teams in this next "Step" league.
So tight is money that the team travelled to London last weekend without the usual "luxury coach" (shame), overnight stay (pity) and with borrowed training kit. No wonder they lost?
Investor John Blackledge and Sage Investments cannot prop up the club anymore, as it loses money weekly following the recent relegation from the Football League, so there is little income to boost the coffers and pay the wages.
The club is desperately asking neighbours Middlesbrough FC to help them out, reminding the Teessiders that HUFC helped them out in 1986 when they loaned their Victoria Ground for a "crucial home fixture", when Ayresome Park was padlocked following Middlesbrough's liquidation. For the full story of the decline:
https://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/timeline-of-decline-for-troubled-hartlepool-united-1-8950138
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