HEADING to Torquay United was supposed, for Hartlepool United, to be a relaxing affair. Two home games before this trip was due to herald a decent points return.

Instead, they played out back to back 1-1 draws with Sutton and Tranmere. Now they need to win today at Plainmoor to keep on track with Craig Harrison’s points haul.

They may be in a run of one defeat in 12 games, but they are ruing four points which slipped away in the last week.

Pools did enough to win both, but they could have thrown away Tuesday’s game with Tranmere after the visitors squandered two good openings in the last minutes.

Harrison’s side set off yesterday morning and trained at Aston Villa en route to the south west.

The manager said: “We need to go there to win the game, that will probably end a reasonable week with five points. Winning one or two of the home games and we could have gone there to make sure we don’t lose.

“It would make it an OK week if we win. Five points, just over half of the points available. It wouldn’t be a good week, but a satisfactory one.

“We will pick up points on the way and look at the next block of points we go towards. We go there to win.’’

He added: “We all wanted six points and we were in winning positions in both games, so we aren’t happy. Two points, could be the difference between promotion and not, but those two games are done now and we take the positive from it.

“On Tuesday it was, for 60 minutes, as good as we have played attacking-wise. We were excellent and their keeper made saves. We scored a fantastic goal.

“I would imagine stats-wise it’s the most shots on target in a game we have had this season. A second goal makes a difference. It was the same against Sutton.

“We didn’t have much luck at the start of the season – and a share of poor play too. Human error brings an element of luck, but it should even itself out over a season.’’

Harrison will be without Devante Rodney today after his fifth booking of the season on Tuesday night. He could be replaced in the front three by Jack Munns.

Skipper Carl Magnay is a doubt as he is carrying a hernia problem, which is likely to see him have surgery next week.

“I would say we’ve had bad luck with injuries, but we do need some luck in all sport and I wouldn’t put that down to not winning those two games,’’ he reflected.

“The team who makes the least mistakes will win the league and be promoted. It’s stating the obvious really and it happens nine times out of ten. Early part of the season and we made mistakes and didn’t pick up a lot of points. Of late we have made fewer mistakes and picked up more points.

“There you are, that’s my experience of this league.’’

Today’s opposition have picked up and won their first away game of the season in midweek after former Sunderland boss Gary Owers took over earlier this month.

Pools’ players were in on Wednesday for a warm-down session, were resting on Thursday before travelling and training yesterday.

Harrison is big on sports science when it comes to managing his squad and said: “The players have had some time off this week, the facts are their GPS results show they are running 12 kilometers a game, that’s 36 in a week.

“You have to load training in according with that – you can’t have a tough training session on the back of games. Recovery is important and we need a massive shift in again.

“We go there confident and we are looking for a positive result every single game. Play like we did for 60 minutes on Tuesday and we won’t be far away.’’