Hartlepool United: Hanging By A Thread

Last month, Hartlepool United was put up for sale again. The club, which tumbled out of the Football League for the first time in ninety-six years last season, needs between £125,000 and £150,000 to cover wages and running costs to the end of January. The last wage bill was paid on time, but staff have been briefed about the precarious financial situation. Owner John Blackledge of Sage Investments is unwilling to inject any more cash into a club that seems to be haemorrhaging it.

Time is not a luxury Hartlepool can afford. While it has been confirmed that six potential investors have signed non-disclosure agreements, these processes take time. Due diligence and the FA’s Owners & Directors Tests can take weeks, even months. The players and staff are due to be paid on the twenty-fifth of this month.

The Fall

For a club that prided itself on clinging to its Football League status, last season’s relegation was a seismic shock. Hartlepool had a record fourteen appearances in the re-election places without ever being voted out, but the trapdoor finally opened. A final day victory over Doncaster Rovers was rendered meaningless by a late winner for Newport County, sending Pools into the National League.

The blame was spread widely. Jeff Stelling, the club’s most prominent supporter, used his Sky Sports platform to demand manager Dave Jones “just go now”. Jones, the third manager of a disastrous season, was gone two days later, but it changed nothing. His predecessor Craig Hignett had departed in January 2017. The chairman, Gary Coxall, also “resigned for the good of the club” just three days before the final game. Coxall had been the face of JPNG, the anonymous recruitment company that bought the club from Increased Oil Recovery (IOR) two years earlier. Under his watch, promises of a new kit deal and a signing budget failed to materialise, three winding-up orders were faced in six months, and the club lost the league status it had fought for decades to protect.

The current ownership, HUFC Holdings Ltd, fronted by chairperson Pam Duxbury, has overseen a similarly grim chapter. The team sits perilously close to the National League’s relegation places, winless since November. Off the pitch, the situation is dire, with debts rumoured to be near £2m. A recent trip to Dagenham & Redbridge saw the team travel by train and borrow training kit after a launderette held the club’s own kit over an unpaid bill.

A History of Close Shaves

Hartlepool supporters could be forgiven for thinking things might have been even worse. Before JPNG’s takeover, another buyout in late 2014 collapsed in chaos. The prospective owners, TMH 2014, headed by Peter Harris with Stephen Murrall as a director, failed to provide the Football League with the required proof of funds. It later emerged in court that the attempted takeover was fraudulent. Prosecutor Miranda Moore described Murrall as “a gambler in the true sense”, who used forged bank statements and a fake letter from Ernst & Young to secure a £500,000 loan, partly to repay gate receipts he had instructed the club to divert into a TMH bank account. Harris and Murrall were convicted of fraud in October.

Can Anyone Save The Club?

With no appreciable assets - the council owns Victoria Park - and money having run out, the prospect of Sage Investments recouping its money seems slim. This leaves the club in a perilous position, unattractive to legitimate investors but a potential target for the sort of characters it has seen too much of recently.

Distrust is rife.

Supporters on forums question how the club can be losing so much money. One pointed to the recent sales of several players, a parachute payment, and 2,600 season ticket holders, asking how the club could have gone bust while supposedly run by an expert in restructuring businesses. The Hartlepool United Supporters Trust, formed in 2015, offers a glimmer of hope but cannot conjure the hard cash required. As its chair, Ron Harnish, recently explained to BBC Tees, “In all honesty, when we were a debt-free league club - we couldn’t get investors then. Now we’re a non-league club with a debt, do you honestly think people are going to rush in?”

Perhaps a benevolent local business consortium will step in to perform a civic duty. Perhaps a wealthy fan has been watching Jeff Stelling’s pained expressions every Saturday and decides to act. The fear, however, is that neither scenario is plausible, and Hartlepool United’s next fight is not for promotion, but for simple existence. The next wage bill is due on the twenty-fifth of January.