Dave Challinor aiming for back to back National League wins for the first time as Hartlepool United manager ahead of trip to Dover Athletic

Pools secured a 2-1 win at home to Eastleigh on Tuesday night to end a run of four games without a win.

The three points saw Pools climb to 13th in the table and they will move up a further two places if they are able to build on their victory and claim another at Crabble.

While they have never lost back to back league matches under Challinor, they are also yet to win consecutive matches which has ultimately stunted their progress in the table.

Hartlepool have notoriously had difficult spells over the Christmas period in the National League. The fact that this season's festive points return of seven is their highest since they dropped into non-league football speaks volumes.

Victory at Dover on Saturday would take Pools’ tally to a fairly respectable 10 out of a possible 18 available.

“We were disappointed with our points return over Christmas but we had difficult games over that period and football moves on quickly,” Challinor said.

“One win can change an awful lot for us and hopefully one win can become two wins then three wins and all of a sudden the things that have happened over Christmas are forgotten about.

“It’s about putting a run together and backing up the win on Tuesday.

“Hopefully we can do that, we’ve been pretty consistent in terms of our performances and our levels but we’ve been inconsistent when it comes to results.

“There haven’t been too many occasions where I’ve needed to have a right go at the players, there have been some and I’ve done that but we need to find the consistency in our results.

“Something we have done well is when we’ve lost games in the league we’ve bounced back and haven’t allowed ourselves to lose consecutively in the league which is good but we keep getting ourselves started and not taking advantage of it.

“We’ve got ourselves a start on Tuesday and we’ve got to go and back that up.”