Just ten days after Hereford travelled
to Macclesfield for a game they didn’t have much luck in, Macc come down to
Edgar Street on Tuesday for the reverse fixture.
The Bulls went into that last game
between these sides off the back of two straight defeats. That run has now been
extended to five straight defeats, which has put the Bulls in a very difficult
position with the gap between them and safety widening, effectively making this
a must-win game, with Aaron Downes admitting as much on Saturday after defeat
to Buxton.
Ahead of that first game at Macclesfield
I suggested that:
“An impartial observer would still see
Hereford as being in the strongest position of any club in the bottom six, and
to fail to finish above four of their fellow strugglers given the position
those three wins on the bounce recently left them in would take a complete
tailing-off in form.”
Well, that ‘complete tailing-off in
form’ has happened, and Hereford are no longer ‘in the strongest position of
any club in the bottom six’.
Hereford arguably had the better of
things up at Moss Rose until Harrison Sohna was controversially sent off. Macc
captain Paul Dawson acted ‘professionally’ in making a point of shouting at the
prone Sohna an inch from his face to signal his feelings about Sohna’s actions,
which may well have turned a yellow into a red. Such interventions aren’t
particularly surprising of course, but what was less palatable was another of
their players celebrating once the ref had brandished the red card.
Regardless of the unsavoury nature of a
player celebrating the early exit of another (Sohna sits out the second of three
matches here as a result), what it did suggest was that the Silkmen knew at
that point that they’d been up against it when it was 11v11, and Hereford will
know there’s no gulf in quality between the sides. What there might be,
however, is an energy deficit given the recent back-to-back fixtures the squad
has ploughed through; there were hints at tiredness against Buxton on Saturday.
Macclesfield had no game at the weekend so they should be fresh.
The newly-promoted Silkmen emulated
Hereford in shooting up the lower leagues (after previous incarnation
Macclesfield Town went pop in 2020), and cantered into the National League
North in winning the Northern Premier last season, a good few weeks before the
end of the season.
Robbie Savage was at the helm for that
promotion, before leaving for Nailsworth’s Forest Green Rovers, with Laurent
Mendy, Tre Pemberton, and Neil Kengni going with him to the Stroud Valleys.
Those losses could have been felt deeply. That hasn’t really been the case
though, as like Merthyr they’ve adapted quickly and well to the NLN. They’re
fourth in the league, have won five of their last seven, and games in hand mean
that they’re looking rock solid for a play-off place.
Macc have done very well to have
sustained a play-off push having lost two key goalscorers. Centre forward Danny
Elliott scored 40 in 50 last season at a level lower, and got a goal every
other game for Boston at this level a few seasons ago. He’d scored 11 in 20
before getting injured in January, and is out for the rest of the season. They
also lost D’Mani Mellor, who’d been matching Danny Elliott in terms of goals
scored, as he’s also gone to Forest Green.
Midfielders Justin Johnson and Isaac
Buckley-Ricketts are familiar players from their time with Chorley and Curzon
Ashton respectively, with Johnson in particular being Chorley’s star man a
couple of seasons ago.
I said it before the Buxton game, but
one thing the Bulls could really profit from is a change in fortune. A gifted
goal of the sort that often gets conceded but seemingly never gets scored could
spark a revival.
As was the case against Buxton, the
first task here though will be to get through the first few passages of play
without conceding.
With nine games left there’s time for
more twists and turns yet. There’s no game for Bedford on Tuesday so a Bulls
win would see them move to within three points of that club (they’re rapidly
becoming the sole realistic club Hereford can catch and therefore consign to
relegation). With three games in hand, all of a sudden it would look back on,
ahead of Good Friday’s derby game at Aggborough. It’s just that the actual
winning-a-game aspect of that equation seems so far off at the moment. Another
loss here will signal that meek surrender to relegation is by far the most
likely outcome when those nine games have been played.
Over the course of those ten days
between the Macc games everything has become very dicey. Oh how I’d love to
drive home after this match with some sense of hope following a win, any sort
of a win. Will the dice roll at last in the hosts’ favour here? They kind of
have to.
COYW
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