Looks like Hartlepool’s PR machine is grinding in happy isolation around its own outerplanetary ring after the club banned local newspapers the Northern Echo and the Hartlepool Mail from attending games at Victoria Park.

The North East's League One outfit is in dispute with the local rags over commercial rights, with the Mail refusing to sign an agreement it considered unfair. The club then slapped a similar ban on the Echo after it lent photographic images to the Mail.

United have closed ranks at a time in the game when you'd have thought they'd be desperate for as much press coverage as possible, and are refusing to speak to either paper, leaving the Echo to create Roy of the Rovers-style artistic images of matches.

It’s a novel way of getting around the issue, but if you were a Pools fan unable to attend matches, you’d be left wondering if Richie Barker’s 35-yard howitzer was really quite the netbuster that a few pencil lines at the back of the local rag really painted it out as being.

And did Gary Liddle really take on fourteen opposition players before grounding the ball, crouching down on his hands and knees and heading over the line, or was it a shanked mis-hit from six yards out?

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