Hartlepool United Football Club

Hello everyone and welcome to my first Blog here on theOfficial Website.

My plan is to write a piece each week to keep you all up to

date on what is going on at the Club on the football side of things and ensure you

are all involved as we make progress back towards playing again.

I suppose one of the biggest issues at the moment, going

alongside the overall concern, is the uncertainty. It's difficult to know what

we can expect next in this country and across the world.

From our perspective, all you can do is plan based around

the information and advice you have and what might happen further down the line

once we're all more comfortable. The uncertainty means that our decision-making

is very reactive.

We have put a plan in place around training continuing as

best as possible, knowing that eventually there has to be a chance that the

country could be placed under lockdown like we've seen in other places around

the world. Things are developing hourly so you have to be ready to change.

We made the decision after Tuesday's training session that

we would send the lads home. They have sessions to be getting on with and we can

monitor them doing that via an App we have so that will take them through the

weekend, though we had always planned to be off Thursday to Monday anyway. We

can assess where we are after that.

We've worked hard to get the players to the physical levels

they are now, we've pushed them every single week and used the GPS monitoring

as our guide for training. From that we have had no muscle injuries which has

been really pleasing but we have to plan for games to restart from 4^th

April until we're told otherwise. Whether that happens or not we're unsure, but

we have to keep the players physically safe so that, when we do come back, we

don't lose people to potential muscle injuries.

We had an in-house game among the squad on the pitch at

Victoria Park on Tuesday. Ideally, we would have played against another club

but obviously the situation dictates that it was impractical and playing it at

The Vic meant we had full control over the environment and what the players

come up against.

It was important to get game time for the likes of Lorne Bickley

and Michael Raynes, who has been back in training with us after a thigh injury

but it's now time to try and get him back to where he needs to be physically to

play games and what he does in a match situation.

We did four 15-minute blocks really and I was in control of

the watch so was able to stop it when the ball went out of play and that meant

we were able to get more or less a match load out of them, collectively and

individually, during the course of the session.

We've giving the responsibility to the players now and we need

them to be responsible and professional during this uncertain period. We have

gone through the NHS and Government guidelines and given them the three

sessions to do while they're away from us so hopefully they all do that diligently

and safely. We trust them to do that until we see evidence to the contrary!

From a wider perspective, it's quite a strange scenario for

me. As much as you want to be around, I am an asthma sufferer myself so perhaps

at a greater risk than some other people at this moment in time.

The situation is so weird and unlike anything else any of us

have ever been through though and you just hope that everybody stays as safe as

possible and this virus can pass by quickly and cause as little damage as

possible. It feels almost like being in a film right now, it's all surreal so

we can only cross our fingers, look after each other while we make the best of

the horrible situation we find ourselves in.

In terms of passing the time, I am not sure what I am going

to do. I guess there will be a lot of watching television, films and things

like that. I will try to read some books and do some CPD work from a management

and coaching point of view.

Other than that, I am actually just about to stick Netflix

on now – I am watching 6 Underground at the minute. However, I need to find a

series I can really get my teeth in to so if any Pools fans have good suggestions

then I am all ears!

Keep safe, everyone – I will be back with another updatesoon.

Dave.