6th March – Hartlepool vs Southend – Position: 22nd

I like Jeff Stelling, I really do. I think he’s the pinnacle of Soccer Saturday and he does an almighty job keeping blabbering idiots like Paul Merson and Dean Windass entertaining. However, when I see his smug fucking face celebrating Southend’s downfall, I’d want nothing more than to punch him. It’s completely contradictory, I know, because I’d be doing the same… That said, his cheery demeanour doesn’t give any sense of consolation to my team conceding defeat with nothing more than whimper.

Earlier on in the season, Hartlepool found themselves 2-0 up at half time at Roots Hall by what can only be explained by a rip in the time space continuum. 2 shots, 2 goals, but Southend had dominated the game entirely. So, when we scored 3 goals in the second half and took the 3 points home, I wasn’t exactly shocked.

A mere few months later and the same rip had befallen us, except this time against a team that looks completely beaten.

Adding insult to injury, enter Roy O-Fucking-Donovan. A striker that we once courted before he found himself at Sunderland, he previously looked disastrous for us… disastrous enough for me to say he was the only striker to look more dangerous running away from goal. Well, karma’s a bitch.

O-Fucking-Donovan notched a clean hat trick as Hartlepool won what is a crucial six-pointer against us. Defensive errors continue to cost us dearly, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that Jean Yves M’voto, a defender that I won’t be alone in thinking could have been pivotal to our survival, is nothing more than an error-prone false saviour. The French defender immediately gifted O-Fucking-Donovan the first and the entire back four froze for the second.

By the time O-Fucking-Donovan had finished, the result was just a foregone conclusion. Alan McCormack had seen to that, finding it absolutely necessary to lunge in late on a Hartlepool player despite being on a yellow card. He’ll now miss the home game next week, as well Christophe through suspension and Grant through injury, severely limiting the options in midfield. Not all footballers are as intelligence-challenged as the press would have you believe, but it’s a stereotype only made more accurate when you consider the mind-numbing stupidity exhibited by McCormack.

McCormack’s stupidity is one thing to take, but the complete lack of fight is something that I cannot abide. It’s why defeats against Charlton and Norwich were made ever-so-slightly bearable. The thought that, in the grand scheme of things, the players couldn’t have given anything else is something which comforts any football fan… Not only because it’s all you can realistically ask for, but because it’s all the fan, himself, could produce. Footballers are paid an awful lot of money and to watch them saunter around the pitch without a care in the world is offensive.

In a league perspective, this result puts us slap bang into the relegation dogfight, sent into the relegation zone for the first time of the season, at the worst time of the season to do so. With three consecutive home games in two weeks, it’s a position the team can amend by producing solid performances of a level every fan knows they’re capable of.

Unfortunately, I think the blow of this defeat will be something more akin to a knockout than a body blow… Something we just won’t recover from. Roy O-Fucking-Donovan…