Hartlepool United: "As you get to know me you'll realise how obsessed I am about football, about winning, about improving''

But the new Pools boss fell back in love with the beautiful game and never looked back; he hopes battle-weary supporters can feel the same.

Pools have suffered in recent seasons, constant struggles finally culminating last month in relegation from the Football League.

They now have to cope with National League next season, with Harrison, poached from TNS in the League of Wales where he led the side to unprecedented success, at the helm.

Pools have bottomed out. Off-field problems seem to be balancing out with the removal of former chairman Gary Coxall and the club possessing a behind the scenes masterplan.

Getting back into League Two is vital, and the sooner the better.

Harrison is one of European football’s most successful coaches. It’s only in the League of Wales the sceptics scoff, but he feels his systems, principles and football beliefs are ripe for success at a higher level.

Harrison’s playing days came to a brutal end. A combative defender, he was playing for Crystal Palace reserves against Reading and suffered a double compound fracture. Tibia and fibia protruding from his leg.

Aged 25, his dream, his career was over.

"It took me three or four years before I even watched a game after I had my injury,’’ he admitted when speaking to the media on Saturday morning at Pool’s Victoria Park.

"It turned my life upside down, it sounds a bit dramatic, but it really did.

"You are a young boy and you dream from seven, eight, nine years old of being a footballer.

"I think there is a stat that only two per cent of all young boys who enter the game play in the Premier League.

"I was fortunate to be one of them and it was a huge achievement, but it was taken away through no fault of my own 15 years ago.

"Back then there was not the open-mindedness there probably is now talking about depression - it's not like it is now.’’

At the time, mental health, depression and the thoughts which come with it were frowned upon. There was no support system in the game to help players, and, indeed ex-players.

Harrison came through it the hard way, and it’s turned into an experience is can regularly draw upon.

"The Crystal Palace doctor was fantastic, but apart that, it was the era of 'you've been a footballer, get on with it',’’ he mused.

"These life experiences are things I can bring to the football table, I've been through a lot.

"I've had a fabulous career, I was very lucky to play to play at a fantastic Premier League club like Middlesbrough and Crystal Palace and I had a short spell at Preston.

"I've had a grounding of managing at a lower level and I've managed in the Champions League.

"I have a huge array of experience for someone who is relatively young, in football and in life.

"I'm 40 in November, I don't know where it's all gone.

"I think the experience I've had, the highs and lows, will be priceless moving forward.’’

Craig Harrison, the wilderness years, were coming to an end. It happened by chance, the opportunity to show some interest in football wasn’t on his agenda. Football didn’t matter until a chance meeting at his own birthday party.

He recalled: "It was a lightbulb moment, quite bizarre really.

"My partner, Danielle, organised a surprise 30th birthday party in our garden.

"She'd hired a band and one of the guys was ex-Wrexham player Gareth Owen, the manager of Airbus UK, who were in the Welsh Premier League at the time.

"I got introduced to him and we got talking and he'd just parted company with his assistant manager.

"It was more a drunken conversation and thought nothing more of it, I had no intention of getting back into football.

"But a month or so later, I'd read in the local paper that they still had no filled the vacancy, so I text Gareth.

"He was the player-manager at the time so he needed someone on the sideline. He offered me the job after a half-hour conversation.’’

When Owen moved on, Harrison - "I think I'd be the worst assistant you could imagine!’’ – stepped up to number one.

In charge, he relished the chance presented to him. Football mattered again. The defender who was part of Middlesbrough’s promotion-winning squad of 1998 was back.

The switch was flicked. The light was turned on. Harrison has never looked back, not for a minute.

"There is a certain way I want to do things and I have standards, I'm quite obsessive really,’’ he admitted. "I think I'm obsessive now because I want to fulfil my career as a manager which I didn't get the chance to do as a player, longevity wise.

"On the other side you do see that life is bigger than football.

"It's done us good to get over the bad times in football

"There wasn't many at TNS and hopefully there won't me many here either.’’

Harrison has already played at Victoria Park, Pools used to host Boro reserve games when he was part of Bryan Robson’s squad.

"It's familiar to me, I've played a few times here, it's all part of it being the right fit for me,’ he said. "I've had other job offers, been linked with other jobs, but this one feels so comfortable from the word go."

Gateshead-born and a product of the renowned Redheugh Boys Club, Harrison is well-aware of the passion and pride involved in the North-East.

Some of it may have waned at Pools in the last few weeks; he wants to get it back.

"Up here, football is embedded in 99.9 per cent of people,’’ he said. "I live in Chester which isn't a million miles away from Liverpool and the people there are very similar to the characteristics of North East folk; hard-working, honest, great sense of humour and love their football.

"Football is a huge thing for putting smiles on people's faces.

"Knowing the area, I was born and brought up in the North-East.

"I was born and brought up in a working-class environment, that is obviously where my work ethic has come from.

"I have determination too from having to give up playing football at an early age."

He added: "It's nice to be back in the area, but my partner (Danielle) is not from the North-East, she's a Chester girl, so it might take a bit of getting used to for her.

"But it's something we've spoken about before that if I got the opportunity [to manage a new club] we'd move lock, stock.

"Everyone knows how much this means to me.

"As you get to know me you'll realise how obsessed I am about football, about winning, about improving, about doing the best I can. There are no half-measures with me.

"There was an opportunity to go and manage in a different country and we were both up for that, but, in the end, it didn't happen.

"But that is the commitment I am prepared to make.

"We are here, we are here as a family, we want to be here, we want to have success."