There’ll be an away sell-out of 1,000 people at Victoria Park supporting the Blues this afternoon, with the Carlisle end of the stadium guaranteed to be rocking as the match builds up to kick-off.
“I thank every single person that’s travelling, of course I do, and I’ve done that, and rightly so, in all of our home and away fixtures we’ve had this season,” Chris Beech said. “They’ve been absolutely tremendous and I have no doubt they want what we want, a victory.
“There are no guarantees of that, so we’ve got to make sure we’re ready on our side of the bargain to make sure we’re organised, competitive, right at it, and then we’ve got to make sure we can give all that travelling support something to cheer and talk about.
“That’s up to us, and to them to help us try and get that too.”
“There’s no doubt Hartlepool will give us a very good game,” he continued. “They’ll be competitive, very energised, and Dave Challinor has had a set way of playing for quite some time.
“He doesn’t deviate too much from it, the reason being he’s very successful from it. A bit like ourselves I suppose in the summer, they tend to lose one or two what they would consider their better players.
“They did excellent in the loan market last season, I remember the Middlesbrough goalkeeper saving penalties, Luke Armstrong scoring goals.
"They’ve done great and they’ve started really well. We just have to make sure we look after ourselves – we’re Carlisle, we have to represent us against a good manager, a very good team, and I’m so happy they’re back in the league.
“It was exciting watching their games last year and they’ve started very well off the back of that. They’ve got an excellent home record and I know Dave very well.
“He’s a great bloke, he’s done brilliantly, very patient, tried his best at Fylde to get in the league, gets an opportunity at Hartlepool and does excellently with it.
“I’m very pleased for him because he’s a very concentrated, professional person. He’ll be pleased we’re doing well, but come kick-off that means nothing to either of us. We both want our team to win.”