By Albatross
September 23 2002

Many exiles find themselves surrounded by Premiership fans who have no idea what it's like to follow a club like Pools. So instead you end up forming closer bonds with people who you would expect to be your rivals, as Albatross explains... Living on Merseyside, you get some predictable reactions when you reveal that you're a Hartlepool fan. "Who are they? What division are they in?" Followed by some good-natured ribbing. It's been easier in recent seasons as Pools have been doing better in the league, and have signed some relatively high-profile names. But when you're surrounded by fans of Liverpool, Everton, Man United and even the odd Man City fan talking football just isn't the same.

Lower League football is pretty much in my blood. Various members of my family have been Walsall fans for donkeys years, and I was brought up listening to stories about various cup wins, players with shots that could almost burst the net, and great times of years gone by. And there are stories like this being made even today. My cousin was one of about three Walsall fans who made a game at Cardiff one winter not so long ago; heavy snow had prevented most people travelling, but he was living in Wales at the time. Walsall scored and on the video you can quite clearly see the tiny travelling support leaping up and down like idiots. And then there's the players: what Poolie can forget the enormous contribution made by Brian Honour, and some of his goals in particular? Or the cult status afforded to figures such as Brian Horne, Lenny Johnrose and James Sharp?

There's a bond between lower league club fans, a sort of shared experience of the trials and tribulations that affect you out of the limelight of the Premiership. I'm sure fans of most clubs will remember seeing one of their players scoring the sort of goal that would have commentators wetting their pants if it was done by a big star, but as it's just Hartlepool, or Darlington, or Stockport or whoever it never gets the coverage. Remember the Brian Honour special against Stockport, when he lobbed the keeper from just inside their half? A couple of years later when Nayim scored what was almost an identical goal, many Poolies will have been thinking to themselves that they'd seen that done before. The difference is of course that Nayim's was in the Cup-Winners Cup final on Europe-wide TV, while Brian's was in front of a couple of thousand at the Vic on a September Evening.

All clubs at our sort of level will have similar stories to tell, things that Premiership fans will either never believe or will dismiss as not being important. And so when you meet up with other fans who follow the teams that have spent most of their time in the lower divisions, you know that they will understand what you're going through.

There was the Wigan fan I met at work for example. A regular at Springfield Park, he knew what it was like to see your team go through another season of mediocre performances in the lower reaches. I met up with some St. Helens Town fans when I went to see them play last season, and I immediately felt at home with them.

One of the most powerful instances of this bond though came during my University days. It was that grim time in 1993/4 when it looked like Garry Gibson was going to leave us without a club to support; performances on the pitch were poor and every home game saw people protesting against the much-reviled Chairman. I was stranded in Lancaster, the Internet was just a curiosity, and most of my news about the goings-on at Pools were coming from phone calls to my parents and the Footy Mail which was posted to me and usually arrived on the Tuesday.

I knew the Methodist Lay Chaplain at the Uni pretty well, a guy called Malcolm. We'd had a bit of fun when we discovered our football-supporting affiliations - he was a Darlington fan! However, he knew what was going on, and knew that this was not the time for jokes. He even made the effort to bring back some articles from the Northern Echo about the Pools situation when he went over to the North-East. It meant a lot to this Poolie, and it just goes to show that for all the jibes, all the wind-ups and mickey-taking, Poolies and Darloids have more in common than they usually care to admit!