Keith Curle explains Hartlepool United Christmas party decision as Pools bounce back from Stockport County hammering in Crawley Town success

Pools put in an impressive display across the board in West Sussex to claim their first away win of the season to go some way to repaying supporters for their lacklustre showing against Stockport at the Suit Direct Stadium.

And the players themselves owed Curle a performance after the Hartlepool boss made the somewhat controversial decision when refraining from pulling the plug on the squad’s Christmas party in Manchester in the wake of their embarrassing home defeat.

“I’ve been in the game a number of years. I said to the players after the 5-0 defeat the old me would have cancelled their Christmas do,” said Curle.

“I’d have got them in training the next day, cancelled their next day of togetherness and I'd have probably have enjoyed it, knowing that I'd messed up their weekend as much as they’d messed up mine.

“But the experience in me said I still need these players. So I let them go and have their do.

“It wasn't as good as they would have hoped it would have been if we were in mid-table pushing to get into the play-offs. But there was a lot of talking done and a lot of truths said about themselves because, make no mistake, the players weren’t happy.

“The players were disappointed, frustrated, angry, ashamed, embarrassed at getting rolled over 5-0 at home.

“Sometimes you need to let the changing room level itself and my job was then to say ‘you go out, you have a good time’ and I think my words were ‘have a very good time’ and there was enough sarcasm in it that they knew I wasn’t happy.”

He added: “In my mind we had four or five games going into the January window and I can't afford to lose the players' confidence, lose their mindset, lose their ability.

“The last thing I said to the players [before the game with Crawley] was: You cannot run too much tonight. You can’t win enough tackles tonight. You can’t compete with your opposition hard enough tonight because you have to do more than what we’ve been doing.”