Hartlepool United manager Dave Challinor looking to ‘consolidate’ top spot in the National League with win at Wealdstone

Pools now travel to Wealdstone on Saturday (12:30pm kick-off) looking to extend their narrow lead at the top of the division.

And for the first time in over two months, Hartlepool have enjoyed an uninterrupted week without a weekday match.

"It’s been good,” Challinor said. “It’s given us the chance to watch Wealdstone and allowed us to focus on ourselves on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We’re off Thursday and will train on the way down Friday so it’s been good and we’re looking forward to the game on Saturday.”

While Pools were off on Tuesday night, several of their promotion rivals were in action with third place Torquay United beating second place Sutton 1-0 to keep Challinor’s side top of the table going into this weekend’s round of fixtures.

But the Hartlepool boss wasn’t entirely sure if the result was a positive one for Pools.

“The results weren’t too bad and from a selfish point of view as a team, we stay top of the league for another few days,” he added.

“It’s the ultimate goal and where we want to be come the end of May but it’s still a little bit out of our hands. We’ve just got to focus on our games and winning as many as we can.

“t’s difficult to know what was the best result for us. Our number one objective is to get in the play-offs, our second objective is to finish in the top three and our third is to win the league.

“If you’re looking at our second objective, Sutton winning was probably the better result in terms of us getting into that top three. If you look at objective three, winning the league, then Sutton losing brings Torquay back into it and there’s loads of connotations that can happen.

"If you go deep and look into every team’s fixtures and who they’ve got to play, there are no easy games so it’s about focusing on winning our games.

"The big thing to come from Tuesday is it keeps us top which is a great position to be in and we know that if we win on Saturday then we will stay there.”

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