A first home win still hasn’t been managed by Hartlepool this season with Crawley’s equaliser meaning we had to settle for a point from a one-one draw.
Craig Hignett told the Official Site he couldn’t have been much happier with the start Hartlepool made with that leaving him confident about a ‘comfortable win’ only to let Crawley back into the match.
‘We started well and in the first fifteen minutes looked as though we would win the game comfortably. But then we let them back in to it; I had told them before the game that if we sat off them they would knock the ball about because they`ve got some good footballers.’
When Lewis Alessandra followed up Nathan Thomas’ saved penalty that had Hartlepool ahead and on for the win until James Collins converted his own penalty to assure a point for the visitors.
That (Alessandra) goal was one Hignett thought could be enough to secure a ‘scrappy win’ only or a bad one to be given away to see Crawley back into the match, which they would have won but for a Scott Harrison recovery challenge.
‘I thought it was going to be a scrappy, horrible 1-0 win but then we made a bad decision defensively and it`s a bad goal to give away, from our point of view. We could even have lost it at the end when it came off the post and you would expect Collins to score all day long – it looked a formality but fair play to Scott Harrison for getting back with a point-saving tackle.’
All things considered Hignett was happy to take the point following the performance he witnessed but was disappointed at how Pools played as he’s confident we’re ‘much better.’
‘All in all I am disappointed with the performance; the positive thing is that we can play like that and still not lose a game against a team right up there – but we need to believe that we`re much better than that.’
