'It's been a long time' – the Hartlepool United record Dave Challinor is looking to break at Weymouth

Pools have won their last four matches against Stockport County, Halifax Town, Notts County and Wealdstone and make the 720-mile round trip to the south coast looking to achieve a feat they have never achieved in the National League and secure a fifth successive win.

It’s been almost 10 years since Hartlepool last won five league games in a row. Back then the side were in League One under the management of Mick Wadsworth.

Current coach Antony Sweeney and defender Gary Liddle were part of that Pools squad who ended up finishing 13th in the third tier just under a decade ago.

Now Pools face a very different sort of challenge as they come up against Weymouth with the National League season still very much uncertain.

After Hartlepool made their intentions clear to play on with the season and favouring grants being issued by the National League, the league have subsequently made a u-turn on their proposal and taken it off the table after just 48-hours.

For now, Challinor’s full focus is on the task at hand on the pitch this weekend against a Terras side who are winless in their last nine games.

“We expect a tough game, we go into it full of confidence and they’re probably lacking confidence,” he told The Mail.

“They’ve not had a great run and sit in a position [21st] they’d rather not be in.

"It’s about us doing what we want to do and training has been really good this week, I couldn’t praise the players enough.

"We just hope the one thing that finishes the week off is the performance on Saturday and hopefully the performance reflects what we’ve seen through the week and we can go and get three points.

“To win five games on the spin at any level is a good marker and it’s been a long time since it’s happened to this club as I keep being reminded.

“Nothing surprises me in this league so I know we’ve got to be bang at it and if we’re not then we leave ourselves vulnerable of getting a result that we don’t want.”

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