A Quaker fan

By Clarence Rode
February 25 2009

The club all Poolies love to hate have gone into administration, and the big question here is whether we should be happy or sad. It's always good when your biggest rivals suffer some misfortune or other, usually on the pitch, but this is a lot more serious than that. Basically, the club could disappear. Then what would we take the piss out of? They will immediately be docked points, putting an end to their promotion hopes.
But, more seriously than that, they could do a Scarborough and disappear altogether.
While on the face of it, many Poolies would say "good riddance" to the Quakers, surely it would be a sad day to lose the club we have been poking fun at for a decade since we got some proper owners and they started attracting people who clearly find it difficult to run their club.
I mean, what else would there be to give us a laugh in these hard times?
It was so funny when new chairman george Hodgson set a target of taking the club into the Championship. And even funnier when it became clear he was going to fail.
But administration isn't funny - Darlo should know because it happened to them a few years ago as well. It's becoming habit-forming for the Quakers.
The job of the administrator is to decide whether the club can be saved as a going concern. If the man appointed at Darlo decides they have no future in footy, than that's it - finito.
Darlo may be a small, unsuccessful club playing in a stupid stadium in front of tiny crowds, but they are still our closest rivals and losing them would be a blow for us all.
Yes we could take the piss out of Bore-o because they think they are a big club, but is there anything better in supporting Pools than going down the A19 and A66 and seeing Eifion Williams score a blinder of a goal in an easy win?
Ever since Willie Waddell did the damage at Feethams more than a third of a century ago, the current generation of Pools fans has loved watching us beat them or, in place of that, gloating because they are in a league lower than us.
By all means let them suffer, let them lose points, let them be forced to sell their best players (do they have any worth selling?), let them be forced to move out of that crap stadium.
But don't wish total death on them. It could have happened to Pools years ago before first Harold Hornsey then IOR came to our rescue.
We wouldn't wish the death of a club on our worst enemies ... not even Darlo.