It’s not always sunny in Hartlepool.
As Wrexham ride into the EFL on the back of Hollywood star power, the club that was Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s first choice to buy and turn into the subject of a hit documentary series will play its final game in League Two before heading back into the National League.
“It was a real sliding doors moment for the club,” Jeff Stelling, Hartlepool United club president, broadcast icon and lifelong supporter tells i with a sigh.
Stelling would know – he was one of the first people intermediaries approached about the prospect of the Hollywood takeover coming to Teesside in 2020. The promise was of super rich individuals ready to transform the club but owner Raj Singh was sceptical and after growing frustrated with the delays, Reynolds and McElhenney moved on to Wrexham instead. The rest is history.
“It’s 100 per cent true that they wanted to buy Hartlepool and it’s ironic they went for Wrexham in the end who are going into the Football League when the club who was their first choice, which was us, are going out of the Football League,” Stelling says.
“It’s gone now though, there’s no point in regrets.”
Documentary or not, Hartlepool have a compelling story that – unhappy ending notwithstanding – would not have looked out of place on Disney+.
A port town that juts out of the North East of England into the North Sea, Hartlepool is frequently neglected and often patronised. But there is a kinship, loyalty and fierce pride in the place that finds its outlet in the local football club.
No-one reflects the devotion it inspires better than Ian “Buster” Gallagher, lifelong fan and former junior player who spent two spells at Victoria Park as head of physiotherapy. He is so firmly embedded in the club that he was even part of the caretaker management team six years ago.
“It’s amazing what it means to the town. When we got promoted [to the Football League in 2021] under Dave Challinor there were people on the pitch, from eight to 80 in tears,” he tells i.
“The club had the town and the fans in the palm of their hands when we went up.”
Promotion played out during the Covid pandemic and fans returned with tifosi-style flag displays and sell-out crowds. Gallagher left his role last year to expand his thriving first-team physiotherapy practice but says he departed with the nagging feeling “this is as good as it’s going to get”.
There is pain in his voice when he reflects on this season’s “heartbreaking, devastating” relegation. “All it needed was a bit of investment and we’d have kicked on again,” he says. “Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it wasn’t there and you could see the decline coming.”
Both Stelling and Gallagher believe the rot started to set in when Challinor departed for Monday’s opponents Stockport in November 2021. The strong suggestion is he felt he wasn’t backed sufficiently.
Five managers have been in the dug-out since, concluding – perhaps unsurprisingly – with an entirely avoidable relegation.
Paul Hartley, fresh from guiding Cove Rangers into the Scottish Championship, was the first of three this season. He misjudged the gulf between the lower reaches of Scottish football and League Two, overseeing disastrous close season recruitment of players not cut out for the level.
Transfers also arrived late, with games set up as part of a pre-season tour of Portugal even cancelled due to lack of players. Hartley didn’t last long but the club was left playing catch-up.
They burned through another manager – Keith Curle – before current incumbent John Askey arrived. He has overseen an improvement but it’s been too little, too late and it said it all that the manager railed against members of his squad as “some of the most selfish individuals I’ve ever met in football” after last weekend’s defeat of Barrow.
The rancour continues off the field. Singh released an extraordinary 20 minute video on the club’s YouTube channel laying bare his frustrations at what had gone on and his version of Challinor’s exit, not long after signing a three-year contract, is that the former boss was trying to engineer his exit long before Stockport’s offer.
Singh also confirmed he has put the club up for sale but Stelling doesn’t necessarily think he should be painted as a villain.
“Raj Singh saved the football club five years ago when there was no-one else. Believe me, I know because I spent a lot of time trying to persuade people to fund the football club,” he says.
“He put his hand in his pocket as I put mine in my pocket as well. Mine aren’t quite as deep as Raj’s but he did what he promised he’d do, got the club back in the Football League, appointed Dave Challinor and yes he’s made mistakes since but he has to take credit for appointing the best manager the club has ever had.
“There are a lot of positives but I don’t necessarily think that some of the staff he’s recruited around him have been up to the mark. They’ve let him down. But despite public perception he’s done everything and more that he said he would do.
“He has told me that he’d always leave the club in the best possible state and sell to people who could take it forward and I have to believe him.”
Stelling hopes to spend more time at the Suit Direct Stadium next season now he is leaving Sky’s popular Soccer Saturday after 25 years. He remains optimistic that hope can be discovered in the wreckage of this season.
“I would say ‘don’t panic’. We’ll see what happens,” he says.
“I know there are a number of groups interested in buying but I’ve been in the position before where I’ve been trying to broker deals or help broker deals and when you ask people to put their money on the table that’s when the crunch comes.”
Perhaps what has happened at Wrexham may end up benefiting the club in the long-term.
“What I do hope is that investors look at the success they have had at Wrexham and it may be of benefit to us in the long-term,” Stelling says.
“Surely when people look at the joy those two film stars are getting out of non-league football then hopefully there is someone out there who thinks ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of that’.”
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/VjWfhtl
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