Joe Ramage: Hartlepool United searching for new heroes as promotion winning stars all but fall

It felt quite sore watching the National League play-off final.

While you most certainly cannot begrudge Notts their success, given their incredible exploits in the league this year only to still miss out on automatic promotion, you can’t help but cast your mind back to Hartlepool United and their penalty shootout glory against Torquay United.

Cedwyn Scott, a player very loosely linked with Hartlepool last summer if you believe everything you see, was the one to convert the match and promotion winning spot kick at Wembley to create a team of heroes for County.

For Hartlepool, their 2021 team of heroes is almost gone.

Next season Hartlepool will return to the National League, hoping their stay will not be as elongated as their last unwanted trip to non-league.

But within that return, supporters will, undoubtedly, look back to their promotion success of two-years ago. What worked? Who was involved? Can we do it again?

Unfortunately, very few remain.

Despite the core spirit built across a gruelling campaign in front of no spectators during the COVID-19 schedule, Hartlepool’s heroes have been dismantled in two short years.

With relegation confirmed this year, so too came the news two further players from that squad would be leaving.

Jamie Sterry has been one of those players you can acknowledge and appreciate having at your football club.

His candid nature in interviews extended to the utmost generosity and service within the community – mirrored with being a player possessing stacks of ability at this level.

Although supporters may contest his absence in the club’s final game of the season at Stockport County, in a season of challenges with injury, Sterry has given a commendable two-and-a-half-years of service to the club having remained last summer.

Unfortunately, he becomes the latest key player to leave on a free at the end of his deal – see Luke Molyneux 12 months ago, see Rhys Oates a year earlier.

Sterry was quickly joined by Ben Killip, who will end his four-year stay with the club this summer.

Killip would often split the opinions of supporters but he was another who was in the trenches with the club two years ago. Another promotion hero.

These are hard personalities to replace.

Hartlepool went down the route of tearing up that squad almost completely last summer and it is a move which has, ultimately, backfired.

At the time of writing, only four remain – Nicky Featherstone, perhaps, the next in line to depart.

It’s demoralising for supporters to see a group they grew so fond of, who became so likeable, and will have their place in the club’s history, move on so quickly.

For Notts County and their supporters, that journey and that bond with their now promotion winning squad is set to blast off from its infancy. Maybe they will look upon Hartlepool as how not to do things with those players over the next two years?

For Hartlepool, with just a smattering of those left from Bristol, they are now backed into a corner. They, unfortunately, must move on from those memories in the hope they can create new ones and with a new team of heroes.