The Poolie Bunker

At Forest. I think we'll have learned a few lessons in the last week and I'm going for the win.

3-2 to us, Barker Moore and Nelson. Barkers a penalty obviously. Given away in the 16th minute by the hapless Kelvin Wilson who will be getting turned over by Andy Monkhouse for fun.

wow to give so much detail before a game you must have played at a reasonable level kev, I'am impressed!

As you know, Mr Ed, I am an international.

Yeah International playboy, we know, you keep telling us!!!

I reckon we're gonna get beat 2-0

Indeed and I am the last of them.

I reckon we will win 2-1 - we are playing better away than at home currently but can't buy a clean sheet

I havent played at a reasonable level - but am very much appreciated (tw@ts)so I would take the above with a pinch of salt

i fancy a win too, we are like a different team away from home im going for 2-0 brown and foley. im looking forward to this one its my 1st trip to forest the fallen giants. you're not famous anymore

Pools will never win in front of a crowd of more than 15,000.

Thats what I said to the missus when she queried why I wasn't going, we seem to always blow it in front of big crowds, that was the main reason why I didn't go yesterday, you just know with pools there's certain matches where we get foook all!

Any stats on the last time we won in front of a 10k plus crowd

Carlisle 3-1 02/03 season must've been 10k

And upon browsing In The Mad Crowd a solitary Proctor GOAL against Brizzle City in 05/06 was enough for the win infront of a 11k crowd

How many were at Tranmere for the play-offs?

i felt and commented on this to Mr Harris at times we seemed like rabbits in a cars headlights.

I also think its one of the reasons the home gates are a little lower than expectations (although as I have said before I think our gates are relatively good), in that when we have big sell out games at home we have invariably blown it a little bit (eg last few home games last season when we had an extra thousand or so floating punters.

If we had won those games in style like the previous ones some of those punters may have been back this season.

It is something you start to notice, I suppose the mitigating factors are that these games are generally important and likely to be against good opposition hence the lower than normal ratio but is frustrating that we haven't performed and converted a few philistines in the process

maybe there's some mileage in the notion that if you're used to playing in front of big crowds, it doesn't become a factor in your preparation for a match. If that is a factor which does affect Hartlepool players, then we are at a disadvantage every time. It shouldn't come into it, but those stats tell a story don't they?

lets face it guys at least 4-5 of the current 1st team have played in front of big crowds (mccunnie, clark, antwi, liddle, moore, boland) just a few i can think of, this is what its all about as a professional surely playing at the best/biggest grounds. the players should really be thriving on it.