sorry.. very poorly worded post Al. I would take both hoses off and shoot water from the inlet hose into the drain hose then dunk the drain hose into the hole and it would suck all the water out... this only worked the first time because the water had to seep down after the majority of it was gone and the pump wouldn't stay primed after that. It does work if you haven't done it for a while but if your doing it at the end of each session their probably won't be enough water to keep the pump primed. I actually had a little water left in the centre bag to start with and used that to prime the pump but then i stopped to do something else for a minute and when i came back the pump wouldn't prime, so i used the above method.
hope this described things better.
