Joel Porter - 3rd goal

By Clarence Rode
November 30 2008

Hartlepool are at home to Stoke in the third round of the FA Cup, successfully negotiating the banana skin at Fleetwood to make it into the draw with the big boys. But it wasn’t easy – the game was always going to be difficult anyway, but Danny Wilson was forced into making a string of changes that must have disrupted his plans. Going behind to a goal in 14 minutes didn’t help, either.

Wilson already knew James Brown was out for the rest of the season, and added to that was the loss of Kevin Kyle because he didn’t want to be cup-tied, Sam Collins for the second game running because of a family illness and Richie Jones because of a slight hamstring strain.
But Pools managed to negotiate the tie, with a few scares on the way, thanks to two goals from Michael Mackay plus one from Joel Porter.
At 3-1 early in the second half, Pools should have killed the game off, but the match was always a potential giant-killing and the most important thing is they made it in the end.
Going to places like Fleetwood is what the FA Cup is all about, but at least Pools managed to avoid another fact of FA Cup life – defeat against a lower league team.
It wasn’t the easy six-goal stroll they enjoyed at Gainsborough last season, but it was enough, even though the defence showed that it is just as easily given problems by a Blue Square attack as it is by a League One attack.
Mackay took his goals well and enjoyed his return to the first team, while Matty Robson provided further evidence to suggest he has finally arrived as a Pools player.
He was arguably the team's best defender at Fleetwood - not bad for somebody who has never been regarded as a member of the back four.
Now Stoke visit the Vic on the first weekend of January, hoping for a better result than in their last visit, when they lost 1-0 in League One in April, 1993.

Having knocked another team newly prmoted to the Prem, WBA, out of the Carling Cup, Pools will be hoping for a double.
in round three.