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Hartlepool celebrate 100th birthday
By Clarence Rode June 2 2008
It’s not a birthday that’s sent the world of football into a frenzy of excitement, but it’s important to some. Hartlepool United are 100 years old. Formed on June 1st, 1908, Pools have had a chequered century, but at least the club’s fortunes are brighter now than they have been for most of the last 100 years.

In their 100 years, Pools have had more downs than ups, more frustration than elation and more failure than success.
But the good news to mark the centenary is that while the first nine decades were largely forgettable, the last one has been a lot better.
There probably wasn’t a telegram from the Queen, but a lot of people have good reason to celebrate the occasions, especially the club’s older fans who have every right to feel a sense of satisfaction over the last ten years after what they had to go through before that.

A weekend pre-season tournament has been fixed, with another club celebrating a 100th birthday, Huddersfield Town, taking part. Also there will be a Sunderland team and Scottish side Hamilton Accies.
The club has also commissioned an official history written by the Northern Echo’s Pools reporter Nick Loughlin, but otherwise the centenary is being allowed to pass fairly quietly, though other events are promised for later in the year.

Because Newcastle were the club’s first opponents at the Vic, a former footballer by the name of Shearer went to the ground a couple of weeks before the birthday and unveiled a portrait of himself in bar-code colours to officially open “The Centenary Suite”. As the club put it on the website, this cemented “a close link between Pools and Newcastle United.”
The website did not go on to explain what those links are, but it’s our guess Pools have stronger links in Sarawak thousands of miles away than on Tyneside, 30-odd miles away - apart from the fact that Pools chairman Ken Hodcroft is said to be a died-in-the-wool Mags fan.

Still, nobody’s perfect.

So there will be no fly-past by the Red Arrows, no marching bands, no open-top bus tour and no giant cake to be shared by the fans. However, there are some good offers on season tickets – see the club website.
But it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to rename the ground after former chairman Harold Hornsey, because if it wasn’t for him the club would not have lasted long enough to celebrate a centenary.

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