Inescapable?

Sam’s 25, has lived in Darlington almost all his life but supports – assiduously supports – Hartlepool United. Like so many more, it’s also a story of filial allegiance. Geoff, his Hartlepool-daft dad, is heading southwards, too.

Does he ever blame the old feller? “Every week just at the moment,” says Sam.

The Great Escape specifically references Pool’s last-gasp reprieve against Exeter City in 2014-15 but might ineluctably embrace endless other trapdoor moments in a long and oft-inglorious history.

It couldn’t last. Finally relegated from the Football League last season, the club now faces a darkly uncertain future after the owners pulled the plug, the team gained three points from the last nine National League games and face losing a further ten points if administration ensues.

Last Saturday they’re away at Eastleigh, this side of Southampton. The way things have been going, the escapologists may need to sign Harry Houdini.

Kevin Joyce and his mate Steve, Hartlepool lads, have joined the train at Durham. Even with rail cards, the day’s self-flagellation is likely to cost well over £100. “You do question your sanity sometimes but at the end of the day it’s your club,” says Sam. “I’m still proud to be a Poolie.”

None now demurs at the monkey hanging association. There’s much more to worry about than that.

Geoff can’t understand why the owners bought in. “Maybe they had a master plan but it’s not looking like it. There’s quite a bit of animosity towards them now. There’ve been a few dark days, a few shocking teams, but we’ve never been this low, have we?

“If I didn’t watch Hartlepool I’d just sit at home listening to the radio and chewing my fingers. I might as well see for myself.”

It’s not a dry train, not by any stretch of the imagination, save for Sam Newton who plays cricket for Haughton II in Darlington and has joined team-mates on a pre-season diet. “There’s not many of us you’d call natural athletes,” he says.

Talk turns to good days – better days, anyway – and to the annual end-of-season fancy dress outing for which Hartlepool fans have become famous.

Once they were Thunderbirds, another time penguins – together singing that they believed they could fly. Against Charlton Athletic they were Smurfs, refused entry to the local Conservative Club, presumably because there was a law against it. They let them in at the Liberals, though.

They also point southwards to Leyton Orient, similarly struggling in the National League but recently taken over by the chap who made his fortune by Dunkin’ Doughnuts. “It’s because we’re in the north, look at Sunderland,” says Sam.

Around Peterborough they start a debate about which players, ideally, they’d keep. “Magnay, Oates, mebbe the goalie.” After that they’re stuck.

In the Wagon Works, the Wetherspoons pub opposite Eastleigh station, someone’s texted a tabloid report that Ronaldo, the great Brazilian, is looking to buy an English or Spanish “lower league” club.

A cry goes up: “Anyway know Ronaldo’s phone number?”

Stuart Bayles and Sheila Foster, his partner, have flown down from Newcastle and are making a weekend of it. Stuart hasn’t missed a Pools game, home or away, for six years. Sheila – “If you can’t beat them,” she says, unprompted – missed one. “I wasn’t feeling too well.”

Born and raised in Newfield, now in Spennymoor, Stuart had no Hartlepool connection until invited to a game by former England amateur international George Brown. It was 1993. They beat Southport 4-1 in the Cup.

“Hartlepool fans are like a community, we’ve made a lot of friends here. I’d be devastated if anything happened to them, I wouldn’t know what to do on a Saturday afternoon. Anyone can support Liverpool or Manchester City. I’m just proud to be Hartlepool.”

Bob Cross, another lifelong Hartlepool fan, sits quietly interring a pint in the Cricketers, near the airport. He’s not happy.

“The football club is all this town has left. We’ve lost the steel works, we’ve lost the docks, now it looks like we’re going to lose the Pools.

“People called IOR (the previous owners) but I bet that 99 per would love to have them back. They kept the club going.”

His dad had watched United when they played Manchester United and when they beat Barrow 10-1 in the Cup. Bob was at the Millennium Stadium in 2005, League One play-offs, when Pools seemed within eight minutes of the Championship but lost in extra-time to Sheffield Wednesday.

“It wouldn’t be the same if they had to re-start as Hartlepool 1908 or something,” he argues. “My team’s always been Hartlepool United, I doubt if I’d watch them as much.

“I don’t like being pessimistic, but at least if you’re pessimistic you can’t be so disappointed. Being pessimistic, I think this club is goosed.”

Eastleigh are nicknamed the Spitfires, a drop-wing salute to the 8,000 World War II aircraft built hugger-mugger in Southampton and flown from Eastleigh airport.

A more ponderous claim to fame is that Benny Hill is said not only to have lived in Eastleigh but to have found there the model for Ernie, who drove the fastest milk cart in the west.

Once the team mascot was Spitfire Sam – Spitfire Sam was a dog – but in 2015 it became Brooksy Bear in tribute to Derik Brooks, who founded the club in 1946.

Mr Brooks had died – “met the Lord” says the PA man – a few days before Saturday’s match. He was 94, said to be a traditionalist, remembered before the match with a minute’s silence – a gesture he’d doubtless have applauded.

The Hampshire club are in mid-table, their otherwise impressive ground one of those arms-length out-of-town stadiums that could be half way to Southampton, or possibly France.

Home team officials rattle buckets for their guests’ cause, a nice touch. It’s raining buckets, too. A notice by the visitors’ end turnstile thanks them for travelling 306 miles. The return journey may feel rather longer.

At 2pm part of the pitch remains covered in tarpaulin. Two blokes with forks stand around looking distinctly bifurcate.

The clubhouse is called the Hangar, not to be confused with the monkey hangers. Adding insult to unstaunched injury, a home fan asks a counterpart if Hartlepool’s in Yorkshire. His reply is borderline blasphemous.

The support’s magnificent, the volume extraordinary, maybe 300 away-end unquenchables epitomising all that’s said about hope over experience. They’re rewarded after eight minutes when Michael Woods puts Pools ahead.

The only worry is that the chant “Poolie till I die” sounds like a layman’s translation of chronic illness, and that always ends the same way.

At half-time it’s 2-2, the faithful sufficiently buoyed to break into several stentorian choruses of Two Little Boys, that most improbable of football songs. The only worry about that one, as with all wooden horses, is that the wheels tend to come off.

So they do. Eastleigh win 4-3. “Three points from thirty,” sing the black humoured Blues. It wouldn’t work if it was 29.

It’s nearly five o’clock before the long and lugubrious homeward journey begins, turned midnight before most will be home. Few see light amid the encircling gloom; for the monkey hangers the noose tightens.