Hartlepool midfielder sets sights on vital win against Halifax

Pools take on Halifax Town at Victoria Park following Saturday’s 2-0 reverse in the six-pointer.

Had Pools beaten the Shots, who began the afternoon seventh, they would have leapfrogged Gary Waddock’s side.

Alas, Pools served up a dreadful performance, going down to a goal late in each half, Bernard Mensah’s clever 44th-minute header and James Keller man’s superb 86th-minute right footer.

But George says that the display and result, as bad as they were, are not the end of the world – providing they respond tomorrow night against a Halifax side without a win in almost two months.

“This is a big run of games we have,” said the midfielder, who knows the National League like the back of his hand.

“We’re 14th but only four points off [the play-offs], so it’s tight, you’ll probably only get to see things separate after Christmas.

“It’s very important to get some momentum now.

“Having a match [tomorrow night] means we don’t sit and dwell [on Saturday], we can get straight out and turn it around.

“It’s massive.

“We can’t be dwelling on it for too long, we want to be out there Tuesday putting things right.”

There is much to put right.

Even the most blue and white colour-blind Poolies would find it impossible to dredge up anything positive from Saturday’s display against the Shots.

Not one area or individual came out of the contest with any real credit.

To be fair, the defeat was nowhere as bad as some of the woeful ‘efforts’ of the Dave Jones era – this was not a Leyton Orient or Barnet.

But the performance, and that’s pushing it, was out of character for the resurgent Pools.

“The result wasn’t what we worked hard for all week,” said the 25-year-old Scouser, who was making his fourth successive start for Pools.

“But we’ve got a quick turnaround, we’ll dust ourselves down and address what went wrong, we need to do better but we’re able to go again on Tuesday.

“In the first half, we didn’t really set the tempo we wanted to, we were a bit slow.

“We spoke about that at half-time and we came out a little bit quicker in the second half.

“But the goal before half time took it out of us, but I don’t think we were ruthless enough as a team and we spoke about that after the game.

“Goals change games, we never really tested the keeper in the first half, but when they scored just before half-time it took the sting out of it.”

George admits he is not the best of losers but is adamant that after a set-back like Saturday that the opportunity to make an instant return to the field is vital.

“You do go home and play a game through in your head,” said the ex-Southport and Chester skipper.

“It’s good there’s a game straight away, you want to turn things around as quickly as you can.”