The Poolie Bunker

Paulus asked on another thread what has happened to Jermaine Francis? Good question, as he looked like one of our best signings at the beginning of the season.

The short answer is that recently he hasn't been available all that much! He missed games in October, November and this month playing 4 friendlies in the Carribean for Grenada.

He was around in December but got sent off after the final whistle in the home loss against Yeovil - he was a sub that day and had only been on the pitch a couple of minutes! Automatic 3 game suspension.

Jermaine seems like a genuine lad and I'm sure he was gutted. Fact is though he hasn't started a game for Pools since the beginning of November.

To call this stop-start is putting it mildly. He played a game against Jamaica on the 18th January so wasn't available for the Altrincham and Gateshead games. Might have been on the bench on Saturday, but maybe he came back with a knock?
Hope he's properly around for the spring. We could do with him back.

Good information. many thanks even though I am not Paulus.

Don,t hold your breath!

Thanks for that info FH, I hadn't factored in international duties, I was thinking he'd been frozen out for bad behaviour maybe.

Well I saw a post on X saying he had fallen out with some of the squad after calling them crap etc and Reid was going to knock him out. Jermaine actually responded saying its a load of rubbish and no such thing has happened. He hasn't been mentioned much in interviews of late.

I was also wondering where he was. A guy of his quality should be in the team . Takes players on, helps out in defense and gives 100%. Feathers needs to give us a reasons

The plot thickens.

actually thought he has gone off the boil a bit in the last two games i saw him play. he set the bar high for himself earlier in the season when he was one of the dirst names on the team sheet.

He’s faded from earlier in the season….but why?

Me too. Think we still had the light nights the last time he put in a MoM display

It'll be interesting to see if Pools sign any more wingers on loan. That lad from York was a waste of time - played twice, got injured, went back. Pharrel Brown has been better than that but not as good as peak Jermaine Francis. Hopefully Grenada have got no more pointless friendlies lined up for a while and he can get his head down for us.

just hope LS allows us to shop somewhere away from charity shops and we do not see the likes of that york lad again as well as brown who just looks like others who have come and look better than they really are. there is a player in francis but looks disinterested now for some reason.

Signed for Sutton

For an undisclosed fee, something has gone on there methinks, unless he's homesick.

As Richy said further up there was a rumour he’d been slagging other players off, especially Reid. He had said that it wasn’t true, but his departure has come pretty sharpish afterwards which suggests there may have been some truth to it. Either that or they’ve decided he’s not worth the bother given he’s often playing internationally (fair play to him) and the stupid red card (definitely not fair play). Had a few good moments but I don’t think he will be some big miss unless we don’t get another winger in.

We've just extended Browns loan.

Look forward to seeing him from the other side of the ground on the bench for 90 minutes then. He doesn’t count in my eyes given Featherstone clearly doesn’t rate him.

Good riddance, decent player but stinking attitude and holds himself in an awfully high esteem. Won’t be missed, imo.

All we've got to go on with Jermaine Francis' "stinking attitude" is a rumour flying around on social media, am I right?

Think everybody deserves a right of reply, so this is what the player himself posted yesterday:

'Thank you All the fans,Staff, and players thank you for the love you have shown to me
me and the gaffer at Hartlepool and the players are all fine i had to do what’s best for me and I love football I need to play
Look I understand peoples frustration about me leaving but I have left the club with no bad intention, whatever you read and stuff wasn’t true it was 1 person spreading a rumour which a lot have believed'

From that statement, he wasn’t being played on a regular basis, or he maybe wasn’t part of the ‘Easter Island Statue’ squad who’s really good at putting you to sleep while watching the match.

its not bad is it if a player has such a stinking attitude he was called the durecell bunny due to his not stop workrate. so he has had a dressing room spat that nobody knows whether thats correct or not. it happens regularly and on the training pitch but it usually the player who actually cares that kick it off.

Remember Liam Noble's pizza-gate and lack of professionalism at the club rant. The club addressed that one by getting shot of Noble!
Is there a deep-seated dressing room issue at the club?

Unless you've got more 'evidence' to share that's a daft bit of speculation on your part.

It only takes one person to start a rumour and in no time it is treated as Gospel and inevitably embellished. It is the players place of work and disagreements happen in the workplace. It's not just the players either. Stories abound about dressing room rows but the general rule of thumb is it stays in the dressing room.

Putting aside rumour and speculation, not for the first time the fans surely deserve an explanation for the reason(s) behind Francis's departure. One of the few naturally talented players within the squad who always seem to put the effort in, his fairly sudden exit at a time when the onus is on squad strengthening is a strange one at best.

The fact that Noble went public over pre-match pizzas and lack of professionalism among the players and staff on the way to an away game and his leaving Pools shortly after is not speculation, it happened.
As for asking the question about the possibility of problems within the dressing room isn't daft it's a reasonable question given that Francis himself intimates something has gone on and it's about a year ago since we had our captain sticking the nut on another player videos of which which went public.
Isolated incidents or deep-seated lack of professionalism / discipline?

On Francis, he has stated that one person is stirring it without naming that person. He also states that he needs to play and that is more significant as it suggests that he was able to play but wasn't picked. Why wasn't he picked is a more appropriate question to ask. It is a question for the manager and unless the manager steps forward and answers that question, or somebody else answers it, we're at a dead end. Have we a right to demand an answer, that is debatable. I think that we should have learned by now that a football club will give answers and information as it sees fit. I don't like that one little bit but resign myself to the fact that I get to know what the club decides to tell me. I think there is more to this than we are being told but if all parties are keeping quiet it is que sera.

Liam Noble left Pools EIGHT seasons ago ... He's been kicking around the local league ever since. Bang average player with a massive opinion of himself and an absolute pain in the arse as a person, if you remember his endless 'practical jokes' on club videos of the time.

Luke Waterfall got shown the door at the end of last season - along with most of the players who were on the books!

Jermaine Francis says "me and the gaffer at Hartlepool and the players are all fine" - he doesn't accuse anyone at the club of starting the rumour that got him into trouble. Could be anybody on social media, maybe a so-called 'fan.'

I know that Noble left years ago, and as I said he'd criticised the professionalism of individuals around the club.
We've had the Waterfall incident which probably should have seen him sacked, he certainly would have been in most professions.
Not so long ago we had Mo Sylla refusing to play and a rift in the dressing room leading to relegation.
Now Francis leaves with an aura of suspicion about it.

Mo Sylla's head was turned by his agent... we got relegated because we were in the bottom 2 all season after Hartley had done us up like a Scottish kipper

Sylla effectively going on strike was a huge moment which we never recovered from. We had a chance of avoiding the drop and blew it from that moment.

To be honest for me, will be missed. He always give 100% and liked to take players on. One of the few players in the squad who liked driving forward . Agree went of the boil in his last 2 games but for me Featherstones negativity in always playing safe didn’t suit his style The 2 new players should go straight in to the team but I’m not expecting Featherstone to be that bold. Good luck to Jermaine, classy fella , born entertainer.

feel his problems seemed to start after grayson went. co incidence or what unlike campbell who started to go the other way.

I still maintain that dark forces were in play once it became evident that it was either us or Crawley for the final relegation slot to the NL. The clash between us and them was critical for both clubs survival. None of our loanees turned up for that game nor for the other remaining games at that time even though prior to then everyone was putting a shift in. I have no evidence to support the above but I distinctly recall a bad smell hanging in the air during the Crawley fixture.

cannot see any conspiracy theory about that game. it was more of a case of one set of players wanting it more than the other and the occasion got to our lot being at home.

Askey had a lot to say about having never worked with such a selfish group during that period of huge turmoil and the team not turning up. Wether he meant players, agents, or others around the place wasn't made clear but it definitely implied the issue wasn't just Sylla.

right manager at the club at the wrong time but still feel he left us with a better squad, when they were all fit, than when he arrived.

After Grimsby I thought we were gonna be safe, then the whole thing collapsed because of what didn’t happen on the pitch…like the team actually turning up..it all fell apart.

'It was more of a case of one set of players wanting it more than the other'. That's exactly what happened - but I'm not having it that 'the occasion' got to Pools regular players who had been fighting relegation off for weeks. We had a high number of loanees at that time and some of them of them never turned up for that game, some literally due to 'knocks'. I will go to my grave believing that they were nobbled.

I, and am sure many others, sat and watched that game shouting for our lot to get going. It just didn’t happen for the entire game. We went down with a whimper.

I’m still to this day totally flummoxed as to why.

You could have almost have posted the same comment in respect of yesterday's game, some things never change. Lack of sufficient managerial motivation and worse still, self-motivation.

only time things do change is when incidents occur when the players feel hard done by. even then it does not last long like yesterday when normal service resumes. ever noticed when we do sign players who do look motivated end up like the rest in the end who look as if they could not care less. whatever gripe francis did have he might be the one who was correct.

That was my thought too, rather than sort out any deep seated problem get shot of the individual who speaks out, problem solved.
I'm wondering if Holohan's arrival or presumably bigger bucks than most of the players has sparked something to destabilise the group considering the pathetic effort most of them put in yesterday.

Francis was abused online when he joined his new club:

https://www.suttonunited.net/club-state ... ist-abuse/

Absolutely disgusting, they won't be abusing the kid when he's torturing the static Pools defence in a couple of weeks from now.

Why do you assume that the abuse came from Pools fans?

Why do you assume that I was pointing the finger at Pools fans? In fact it was quite evidently the opposite if you read my post correctly.

Duplicate post

Wow! What an imbecile I am

at least when poolies do it they are open about it and were given reasons for it and not hiding behind a device.