In 1988 Hartlepool United were preparing for their Division Four season opener at Lincoln when they met Manchester United.

No-one could have predicted the outcome, as Sports Editor Nick Loughlin discovered after speaking to three players involved on the night.

TWENTY years ago and Alex Ferguson – as he was plainly then known – had yet to win any trophies since being appointed manager of Manchester United.

About to enter his second full season at Old Trafford, Ferguson had inherited a squad of experienced professionals and youthful promise.

In giving a mixture of his players a run out at Hartlepool United he expected a positive outcome.

Instead, all he got was the sort of scoreline seen on a PlayStation.

In August 1988 Hartlepool United beat Manchester United by six goals to nil.

Pools, bossed by John Bird, caused the Manchester United manager to blow his top.

And for one Pools player it provided one of his greatest experiences as a footballer.

Kevin Dixon bagged a hattrick on the night, with further goals from John Tinkler, Andy Toman and Simon Grayson making it a miserable night for future Pools boss Chris Turner, who was in goal for the Old Trafford club.

“You get results happening which are shocks, but they mostly come in the FA or League Cups,’’ recalled Dixon.

“This one came in a preseason friendly, but there’s no doubt Manchester United had a good, strong side out.

“The first goal was a tap in after we hit the bar, the third was a penalty, but the second was best – I shot into the top corner of the net from the edge of the box. I’ve still got the match ball at home somewhere.”

And he recalled: “I remember one time I was in Poland a good few years after the game. A bloke came up to me and said ‘Kevin Dixon? I’ll buy you a pint, you got a hattrick against Man. United for Pools’.”

Dixon’s other big moment came a few years earlier, as his strike dumped Derby County out of the FA Cup at the Vic in November 1984.

“That was probably my best moment,’’ he recalled. “Derby had a good team out – John Robertson, Kenny Burns, Floyd Street, there was some big players out that day.

“I loved my time with Pools – I was at Carlisle when Vince Barker and the club scout came to see me. I could have gone to Darlington and had to decide what to do as Cyril Knowles wanted me to sign for him down the road.

“I came to Pools, it was tough times, but very enjoyable. There were times we didn’t get paid, but it really didn’t matter then. We all just wanted to play for the enjoyment of it.”

WHILE Pools and Dixon made the most of their night, it’s fair to say things weren’t so great in the other camp.

Ferguson blew his top in the dressing room afterwards, saving his vitriol for goalkeeper Turner.

Lee Sharpe was a young hopeful at the time, making one of his early outings for the club after his move from Torquay.

While the then-named Ryan Wilson was on the bench, a host of other names started: “We had a good side out, – Norman Whiteside, Paul McGrath, Viv Anderson and Mike Duxbury, along with me, Russell Beardsmore, Mark Robins and some of the other young lads,” recalled Sharpe.

“But Hartlepool were a better-organised team and we got absolutely stuffed.

“Alex Ferguson was always going to be angry, so he came in ranting and raving as we sat deflated on the benches in the dressing room. ‘You’re not fit the wear the red shirt of Manchester United’; ‘You’re a disgrace’, ‘You shouldn’t be picking up your wage packet this week: ‘No team of mine ever goes out there and doesn’t work hard’ – all that sort of thing, for five minutes or so.

“Then he said the only player who could hold his head up and say he’d performed was big Paul McGrath, who stopped the score from being eight or nine.

“Fine. No problem with that. It was probably true – but, for some reason, Chris Turner decided he didn’t agree.

“He was a senior player, and he’d been at United three years, so he probably felt he had the seniority to speak up in a dressing room.’’ Sharpe added: “That was his first mistake, just to think it. The second was to go and tell Alex Ferguson he was out of order – quite a serious misjudgement.

“You can’t single out one person,” Chris Turner said.

“You can’t single one person out and say he’s done well, big Paul did well, but we win as a team and we lose as a team.’’ Turner’s opinion started one of football’s legendary blasts – the Alex Ferguson hairdryer.

“I’d actually thought Alex Ferguson had gone mad before, but it turned out that had been nothing at all,”

admitted Sharpe.

“It took 20 seconds or so for him to take in what had been said. He went silent, just looking at Chris, and I thought he was going to agree, say sorry and leave it.

“But then his face started to turn the colour of a tomato. I think he booted some kit bags out of the way to get at Chris. He walked over and put his face just three or four inches from Chris’s face – this, I was to be initiated, was what they meant by the Alex Ferguson hairdryer.

“‘You’, he said, ‘who the hell do you think you are, telling me how to run this football club? When you’ve been a manager you can tell me what I can and can’t say.

I’ll say what I want to my players. This lot weren’t good enough, they were all awful and they’re not fit to wear the shirt. And then he was off, absolutely laying into him for what seemed like five or ten minutes.

“Third mistake, Chris tried to reason again: ‘Hang on a minute, all I’m saying is . . .

and we all just rolled our eyes. Alex Ferguson absolutely launched himself back into him.’’ United’s players, former Sunderland shot-stopper Turner included, were eventually allowed to shower, get changed and leave. It made for a long trip back across the M62.

THE next time Turner stepped into the Hartlepool United dressing rooms was when he was appointed manager in February 1999.

After being handed the task of keeping Pools in the Football League, he was about to embark on a new career, it was an exciting and enjoyable experience.

Quite the opposite in fact of what had gone on before.

Turner recalled: “It was a nightmare for a club like Man.

United.

“No-one would ever have thought what would happen did happen. To be fair to Hartlepool everything they hit that night went in the back of the net. Of course it’s a disappointment – a major disappointment – to lose like that but when you look at the performance I don’t think it was that we were that bad, it was that Hartlepool raised the game.

“Six efforts and bang they are all in the net. If you have let soft goals in, hold your hands up and admit you had a nightmare. I know it was a long time ago, but looking back if I had let a bad goal in which I think I could have stopped, there is no way I would have said anything in the dressing room.

“But I felt I couldn’t fault myself and they were good goals from an opposition point of view. I just thought that I couldn’t listen to what was being said and I had to respond.’’ He added: “Everyone else said nothing – there was only one player who spoke and that was me!

“But the next day we were in for training and all the other lads at the club knew who had played and who was part of the team on the night.

Norman Davies, the kit manager, came into the changing room and said that the manager wanted to see me.

“All the lads came to life and all were saying the manager was going to have another go at me.

“There was a big wooden door to his office at the top of the stairs and I knocked on it.

He was behind his desk and he came round and shook me by the hand.

“He said ‘Chris, you may learn this in the future, but sometimes you have to say things in the heat of the moment. I don’t disagree with what you were saying, but you have to learn these things’.

“I thought at the time it was fair comment from him and you do learn from these things. Maybe it was something which stood me in good stead in later years.

“You cannot help but learn from and appreciate a manager like Sir Alex Ferguson.’’