Simon and Glynis Wright watched yesterday's Cup Tie. Their thoughts are below:
Derbyshire Neck? The name in the title of this piece might immediately suggest someone hailing from that area being blessed with an overabundance of good old-fashioned cheek and/or 'lip' - what the Jews term 'Chutzpah' - but it's not. Instead, it's something - or used to be something - quite prevalent in the hills and dales of Ye Olde Derbyshire, up to around a hundred years ago, when medical science was in its relative infancy, and doctors had very little in their pharmaceutical armoury that actually worked. Certainly, at Edgar Street this afternoon, with lowly Alfreton their FA Cup Fourth Qualifying Round opponents, the home side must surely have come very close indeed to calling their visitors 'a pain in the neck' if only for refusing to obey the script when ordered to do so, which is why I used the above medical term in tonight's title.
No, it's not that, but it certainly is a name formerly used to describe the symptoms of chronic thyroid deficiency; which is what you get when the old thyroid gland gets short on the stuff that helps make it tick - iodine. Get in that unfortunate position, in this case by living in a part of the country where the element's in very short supply in foodstuffs and elsewhere - seafood contains the most iodine - and your poor old neck swells up something awful in the voice-box region, thereby making the victim assume all the signs of having swallowed something extremely bulky, and, in the process, getting it immovably stuck in the gullet halfway down. There are other curiosities associated with the complaint, but the principal reason why you don't see people from the Peak District afflicted in this way these days is primarily because we now know the cause, and can do something to prevent it happening in the first place. And that, dear reader, is why you'll find most table salt iodised these days. To stop the populace of Derbyshire getting it in the neck, as it were. Honest - and if you still don't believe me, just look closely at the small-print on the next container of Saxa or Cerebos you purchase.
Pathological process or not, The Bulls certainly had their work cut out today, trying to get to grips with an opposition that in a flash shoved nine blokes behind the ball the moment the ref first blew his whistle. They'd come for the replay - end of story. Quite a fair Albion representation today, though, what with Tam Mkandawire, who played today, also Danny Carey-Bertram, now back from injury. Add to that the presence of Tucka Trewick on the bench, and we had quite an Albion Old Boys meeting going on out there.
Mind you, just to show how far the Conference has progressed of late, The Bulls even had their very own Cameroonian lad plonked in the home dugout. Yep, a foreign signing, no less. His surname is Ipoua, and being a national of a former French colony, he speaks fluent Gallic, but not much else, a linguistic impediment which probably goes down like a lorry-load of lead shot in their dressing-room. My assessment of his abilities? Having seen him play in one and a bit Hereford games thus far, I reckon it's fair to say that he occasionally comes good with flashes of sheer brilliance, but nine times out of a hundred, all you'll get from him is the mobility of a carthorse and the footballing brain of a three-toed sloth. And today was no exception. According to my little Herefordian mates, he's also making quite a splash in the local nightclubs - well, one in particular! - in, erm, more ways than one. And, at that point, I think it prudent to draw the line.
Alfreton couldn't have been an unknown quantity to Hereford chairman, owner, general manager, and doer of just about every other job you can think of at the cash-strapped little club, Graham Turner, either. How come? His son, Mark Turner, turns out for the Derbyshire lot on a regular basis. Oh, and one other bit of news we gleaned from our chums before kick-off was their Mickey Mouse Cup fate. The draw for the next round was today, so out of the hat came - erm - Port Vale! A home jobbie, too - and if I were Vale, I'd be having grave misgivings about this one already. The Bulls have shown on many occasions their aptitude for bundling football's great and good out of a knock-out competition, embarrassingly so, at times - just ask Malcolm MacDonald - and, as we saw earlier in the week, that wonderfully-anarchic tradition still lingers on in the present lot.
The game, though, turned out to be something of a damp squib. One reason, the visitors' defensively-oriented tactics, I've already mentioned. And, yes, I can understand Alfreton's attitude to a large extent. Victory at this stage of the competition means a shot at the (relatively-speaking) big boys in the next round, but more importantly for them, perhaps, there's also the small matter of the £10,000 prize-money up for grabs. That sort of moolah buys you an awful lot at their level (Conference North, I think), and to go out there thinking the task was an impossible one might class as blatant dereliction of duty with some of their people.
Under normal circumstances, I reckon The Bulls would have steamrollered their opponents into submission anyway, but today, for whatever reason, they seemed plagued by chronic communication problems, and their play ended up a bit ragged and disjointed as a result. That meant the rearguard wasn't meshing with the middle, and the middle wasn't meshing properly with the 'goals department' up front. It didn't help either that in their keeper, Alfreton had their 'secret weapon'. Good positioning, command of his area, a tremendous cutter-out-of-crosses, not afraid to dive at rapidly-onrushing Herefordian feet as the occasion demanded, with a soupcon of genuinely nifty little stops chucked in for good measure as well. In fact, I only saw him make two real mistakes the whole ninety minutes, the first being a breakdown in communication between one of his defenders and himself that led to the visitors conceding an unnecessary corner. The second was an uncharacteristically-hasty 'flap' at a cross towards the end of the second sitting. Far too good for that level of football, I reckon - so what held him back, I wonder?
Theoretically, all those diverse ingredients should have made for an absolutely cracking game, but what really spoiled things was the lino nearest to us. His interpretation of the offside rule didn't half leave a lot to desire, and was certainly at variance with mine on several occasions. Both clubs suffered as a result - oh, and his ideas about what constituted a corner kick and a throw-in also bordered on the eccentric. As for the ref, well, let's be kind about this, and merely comment that his views on what could safely be let go, and what demanded the game be stopped and a free-kick awarded, were - erm - radical. How else can you interpret the stoppage of play for a free-kick to the home side when a Hereford player was clean through on goal? Or, for that matter, simply waving 'play on' when yet another was ruthlessly scythed out of it? No wonder some of the Hereford lot lost it after the second of these blunders; in fact, as a result of his animated protestations, one ended up seeing yellow for his pains.
Mind you, around five minutes from the end, trust the Bulls' 'foreign import' to louse things up big-time. There he was, about five yards from the goal-line, no defenders within spitting-distance, the keeper out of position for once: all he had to do was tap the bloody thing in and the whole of Hereford would have loved him, eccentric leisure-time habits and all - so what happened? Let me put it this way: does the name 'Kanu' ring any bells with you? 'Nuff said?
So, a goalless draw it was, then, and a midweek trip to Darkest Derbyshire beckoned for them once more. They should have stayed in nearby Mansfield last week, really! But, getting back to our car was the best bit; switch on the radio for the full-time scores, and what did we get? Aston Villa 0, Wigan 2. Oh whoops, our blubbery friends had become yet another scalp on the upwardly-mobile Lancashire club's capacious belt. Almost compensates for us crashing and burning when we played them. Almost, I said - but not quite. Wolves dropping yet another two points I also found highly amusing. Mind you, I am easily amused these days. Must be old age creeping in, or something.
And Finally.. One. I discovered an amazing fact about Hereford's Rob Purdie today. He won't travel by coach, end of story. An 'economy' version of Denis Bergkamp, who famously won't let the plane take the strain, if you like. That means that every time The Bulls play away, whatever the ground, whatever the distance involved, the lad simply leaps into his trusty jalopy and follows the team coach the length and breadth of the country. Which can be for quite a distance; all you need is just a quick look at the Conference table and a bit of geographical knowledge dredged up from your schooldays to see just how inconvenient that sort of thing can be. And the devil of a game to keep up with the coach-driver, who might just have an agenda of his own as well. Mind you, as I said at half-time today, given the lad's such an important cog in their wheel, shouldn't someone from the club be driving HIM all those miles there and back every fortnight?
Text at top (next game etc)
Next Game: Oxford City At Edgar Street On Tuesday 5th November At 7.45pm