Dave Challinor wants his Hartlepool United squad to replicate home form away - starting with Eastleigh

Pools, third in the table, return to National League action at 5pm tonight away at fellow promotion hopefuls Eastleigh.

The away trip to Dagenham & Redbridge fell foul of the weather and freezing temperatures on Saturday with Challinor confident tonight’s game will go ahead as planned with a much-improved weather forecast.

Pools have won six on the spin at Victoria Park and Challinor would love to see his players replicate that run of form on the road with a busy few weeks ahead for the squad.

Pools travelled down on Monday with the kick-off time brought forward tonight giving Pools the best possible preparation for the rest of the week ahead of the visit of Yeovil on Saturday.

Challinor said: “It’s almost impossible to stay down there in terms of costings because with the Eastleigh game kicking off at 5pm on Tuesday, we’ve made the decision to go down on the Monday then play the game earlier and travel straight back afterwards.

"As much as it’s a game at Eastleigh, we’ve got to give ourselves the best preparation for not only that game but the game after that against Yeovil.

"We’ll travel down to Eastleigh on Monday hopefully pick up three points on the Tuesday and then have a nice two day lead into this weekend’s match back at The Vic against Yeovil.

"It is what it is, we’re faced with five away games in our Tuesday games coming up so we’ve got to go there thinking that the game is going to be played.

"The forecast is supposed to be almost tropical compared to what it’s been this week.

"We’re expecting the game to go ahead and it’s an important game for us.

"We’ve been speaking about the importance of our away form over the next few weeks. Can we get a run going like we’ve had at The Vic so that we can pick up wins and get ourselves where we want to be in the table.”

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