Which is all the more remarkable when you think about the football club itself. They have never played in the top two divisions. When they won a playoff against Torquay last June to return to the Football League, it was the first trophy of any kind in the club’s history. Hartlepool have spent most of the last century staving off relegation or extinction. They have never been past the fourth round of the FA Cup. That, at least, is something they can now put right.
Stuart Drummond – who dresses as H’Angus, the mascot for Hartlepool United – walks with a rival through the town in 2002 after he was elected mayor in local council elections. Photograph: Owen Humphreys Seven new players arrived in January. The academy, which went with the club’s Football League status, is being reopened. The tired, weathered Victoria Park has had a refurb. “We’re no longer embarrassed to bring people here,” says chief operating officer Stephen Hobin. “When I started, it was dilapidated. It didn’t look like a place you’d be proud to work.”
Money is still tight, not just at the club but in the region at large. But still they come, 5,000 or more every week, and a noticeably younger demographic too. “It’s a football town,” Hobin says. “There are not many football clubs where 50 per cent of your gate receipts are taken two days before the game. About 1,500 wait until they get paid on Friday afternoon. Then they’ll queue round the block at the ticket office.