THOUSANDS of fans, some donned in blue and white jesters hats, some in Joel Porter masks, and others holding home-made tin foil mock-ups of the FA Cup, trudged away from Victoria Park defeated but not too despondent.

Hartlepool United have never made the fifth round of the famous competition before, so what does it matter if the wait goes on a little longer. “It doesn’t,” said Kenny Johnson, the club’s all-time record goalscorer in the Football League. “The whole town should be proud and I think they are.”

Johnson, sporting his Hartlepool United tie, was chatting on Clarence Road, as supporters headed home after witnessing the North- East’s League One club give a healthy account of themselves against Premier League opposition.

This was not the first time Pools have welcomed topflight opposition to their humble home. And while the majority of Saturday’s near 7,000 crowd would point to the 1993 success over Crystal Palace as the pick of those, Johnson quite rightly has other ideas.

Johnson, who turns 78 next month, remembers the mid-fifties, half-way through his 15 years with the club he scored 98 league goals for. In three successive years he was part of a Hartlepool team that faced the best around in the FA Cup – all of them on home soil.

“No-one seems to talk about ‘54-55 when we held Nott’m Forest here before going down there and losing in extra-time after we missed a penalty, nor do they talk about ‘55-56 when Chelsea, the league champions, left here with just a 1-0 win after scoring late,” said Johnson.

“Everyone just asks about the following year, everyone mentions the glamour one, when the Busby Babes came.

The tie was purely theatre because everyone expected us to get beat 5-0, 3-0 or whatever. But we came back from three down to equalise and they got a goal in the last 15 minutes.”

The difference then, however, was that Manchester United and Chelsea both arrived in round three. This was round four. History, at Victoria Park on Saturday, was there for the making.

“Everyone harps on about our yesterdays, but it is not about the yesterdays, it’s today that counts,” said Johnson, after reliving the memories of his own FA Cup days. “Unfortunately we just couldn’t do it this year. Had we been able to beat West Ham to reach the fifth round it would have been the greatest achievement in the club’s history. Definitely.”

But, courtesy of two minutes of mayhem late in the first half, Pools’ chances of making sure their centenary year would be marked by a debut in the FA Cup fifth round were dashed.

Discussions will continue to rage about a few crucial decisions that went against the home side.

And, like in ‘55, ‘56 and ‘57, Hartlepool were the losing side.

Financially, though, the difference was enormous.

Without television stations screening such appetising cup ties, football during the 50s was almost purely about the occasion.

When Forest, Chelsea and even the Busby Babes arrived in the North-East there was a strict maximum wage across the country of just £20 a week, in stark contrast to the £160,000 Pools received from ITV on Saturday. And the Victoria Park coffers have been boosted by more than £350,000 from their FA Cup run this year.

But while the huge sums of cash involved has helped footballers become some of the wealthiest men around these days, perhaps the difference in the crowd size tells its own story.

“In those days we got 17,000 on a day like Saturday,” said Johnson.

“We can’t even get 7,000 now and the town is bigger now than it was then. The prices of tickets these days are probably a lot to do with it.

But there we are.”

Johnson was not trying to be negative, he was just being honest in his assessment of the occasion while being proud of the FA Cup achievements of Ritchie Humphreys et al.

“Even with a smaller crowd, though, the atmospheres were electric on both occasions,” he said.

“For both, though, you could tell the people of the town got right behind the club.”

Johnson, like everyone else inside Victoria Park on Saturday when Gianfranco Zola led West Ham to the region, felt that Pools would have progressed had they taken advantage of a promising opening half an hour.

But once Valon Behrami’s opener was followed by a Mark Noble penalty in first half injury-time, when referee Lee Mason wrongly pointed to the spot when Michael Nelson handled outside the area, the difference told.

“Up front we were a little weak and that’s what prevented us from going ahead when we were the better team in the first half an hour,” admitted Johnson, who simply smiled when he was asked if he would have fancied scoring.

“Once they got their second goal, even if it shouldn’t have counted, they were never going to lose and that took the cream off it, but we weren’t disgraced and everyone can be proud.”

With West Ham out of the way, attentions turn to league duty against Carlisle tomorrow –if only 6,000 home fans would return for fixtures like that.