Stelling performance

WHEN your team is playing Hartlepool and Jeff Stelling is smiling you know you're in trouble.
Stelling - for those who have been living in outer Mongolia or have no interest in football and have clicked on this blog thinking it was going to give you a recipe for tonight's tea - is the presenter of Sky's Saturday afternoon football show.
He's a mad Hartlepool fan - a breed about as rare as a Dutch hill farmer.
And he takes great delight in everyone knowing it if his side happen to be in the ascendancy.
Well, at around 4.35pm the Jeffmeister was positively beaming.
And I knew it wasn't good news.
Sure enough, the scoreline flashed up on screen. Ten minutes to go and it was Hartlepool 2, Bristol Rovers 0.
By all accounts we hadn't had a shot on target.
The only saving grace was that James Brown wasn't playing and hadn't scored the second goal.
You see, when Brown is playing Stelling always has a bobblehead figure of the soul singer James Brown on his desk. And if he scores this musical doll starts bouncing around to the tune "I feel good".
You know the one. "I feeeel goood. Knew that I would now..."
And Stelling will join in the merry dance.
Anyway, back to Saturday afternoon.
Stelling is beaming, and dancing to a fashion - though without the aid of his sex machine toy.
And I am feeling as low as can be.
Hartlepool. Away.
A God forsaken place.
I went there in a past life, when I used to be the Wrexham reporter for the Evening Leader.
It was so cold I had to wear two pairs of long johns and a pair of mittens.
The game took place in late December. The wind was howling off the north sea, there was snow, and I argue to this day that the ink froze in my pen.
I could only sympathise with the 170 Gasheads who had made the journey out of pure love, or complete brain freeze, to see us getting a whipping.
Apparently, according to the BBC website, we hadn't even managed a shot on target.
But wait...
Jo Kuffour pulls a goal back with five minutes to go.
The Jeffmeister takes it on the chin. Oh well, 2-1. Purely a minor inconvenience, he is musing in his head.
Time ticks by and Stelling continues to update us of the scores around the football grounds of the country.
Then suddenly his face changes.
There is a cringe, like he's sucking on a marmite-flavoured gobstopper.
And there is laughter in the background.
It's coming from all his ex-footballer buddies - Phil Thompson and Paul Merson are two of his tormentors in chief.
And suddenly I know. The miracle has happened.
We've managed to grab a last-minute equaliser.
It's come from our centre back Byron "Lord" Anthony, who is making a bit of a habit of grabbing late goals.
Unfortunately, last week's was into his own net, but no matter.
He's made up for it this time and the Gas have pulled off another away-day miracle, following on from the Huddersfield win.
Shortly afterwards comes the final score.
Coldest place in the world which once elected a Monkey as mayor 2,
Shining lights of the warm south 2.
And though it is not the result we would have wanted - a win to carry us into the highest reaches of League One - it has spared me from walking around with a miserable face for the next few days, questioning whether the Gas are really capable of mounting a promotion challenge this season.
And in my head I can hear the Jeffmeister's song, but it is me that's singing it this time.
"I feeeel gooood..."