A view of Hereford from Cambridge

This edited article comes from the Official Cambridge United Website.

Travellers Tales v Hereford United written by Mark Johnson.

Although the journey itself was pleasant enough, there were signs that it was going to be one of those days from the time BBC WM followed a traffic report with an item on how to cook road kill! Speaking of which, we broke our journey at Corley Services, after which we found the motorways continuing to be in benevolent mood and even the slight concerns about hitting Worcester close to rush hour proved unfounded.

All that remained was the winding road into Hereford, through villages that nestled on the misty slopes of the Malvern Hills. And it was here that the strangeness started to increase. From the garage that claimed to be a 'Porsche specialist', but had virtually every other make of car but Porsche on its forecourt, the 'No Fishing' sign at the Hereford & Worcester Ambulance HQ and the Russian T34 tank sat by the side of the road, each village suggested that it would have 'a local shop, for local people' somewhere about its person.

We finally arrived in Hereford just after 5pm and found that it was shut. With the ticket office, club shop and supporters bar all not due to open for another hour, the sign for the public toilets at the cattle market across the road from the ground suggested a welcome relief until one of our travelling party was greeted by a cheery 'hello' from one of the cubicles. We made our excuses and left!

A missing fax further delayed entry into the ground, but there was no real inconvenience as the person who had the key to the press box didn't turn up until 6.35pm. The team, who arrived while we were trying to negotiate entry into the ground, experienced a similar problem with the key to the away dressing room also conspicuous by its absence.

At the Ground: Set between the aforementioned cattle market and a public car park (with cheap parking all day and free parking in the evening), the ground could most kindly be described as 'old fashioned'.

A traditional main stand, with the rows of seats just a fraction too close together to provide enough leg room, ran along one side of the pitch. The first row of seats was elevated due to the front projection of the pitch-side executive boxes with, presumably, toughened glass windows. This area jutted out a fraction from the base of the stand, allowing space on its roof for a number of plant pots.

The main road that ran behind the stand on the other side of the pitch, seriously curtailed its width. This narrow construction was two-tiered, with claustrophobic looking terracing beneath seats whose faded colours had come from a vast palette. United fans were allocated half of this stand.

To the left of this stand the main area of home terracing had covering only at the back from where the lights of the tea bars shone brightly. This was in marked contrast to the other end of the ground, where the warm red glow of a scoreboard was the only clue that its empty terracing was not entirely trapped in some medieval time warp. The fact that this terrace had been split into two sections was a reminder that it used to house away fans, and its curved front allowed plenty of space for a semi-circular patch of weeds to gain a foothold between the terrace and the pitch.

United Fans: Decent support in the first half, they moved up a gear once Hereford's third goal went in as they appeared determined to enjoy themselves despite the match.

Home Fans: Not the loudest.

Stewards: I was impressed by the instructions given at the briefing I overheard before the match, which conveyed the message that all supporters were to be treated with respect and politeness. Not sure that everyone took that message on board, but with a surprising number of Burberry-hatted teenagers amongst their number a 'whatever' attitude was bound to surface occasionally. Generally though, the Chief Steward's instruction seemed to be carried out.

Programme: I wish I'd seen this programme before I commented on Accrington's publication, as, in comparison, the Lancashire club's programme turned out to be good value. 'Bullseye', on the other hand, cost £2.50 for which you got 36 pages - 22 of which were adverts. Of the remaining 14 pages, three were stats, two were standard United pen pictures and two featured a United Dream Team. Oh, and not forgetting the front cover, a couple of half pages of photos and the squad lists.

State of Toilets: Not sure about those for the away fans, but the ones for the main stand were a voyage of trepidation into the unknown with no light, no flush and no sink.

The Journey Home: We were all ready for a straightforward journey home after another away defeat. Unfortunately, there was a delay in getting my post match duties completed, so we couldn't leave the ground much before 11pm. Of course, at that time of night with a long journey ahead, there's then a law that states that every set of traffic lights in Hereford would be red and that progress would be further hampered by then having to follow the team coach through the winding roads back to the M5.

Postcript: Jon Brady on the PA at Edgar Street

"If there was one thing that drove me mad about my spell at Hereford, it was the PA guy's obsession with playing all that daggy dance music. What's wrong with real music played on real instruments? Nothing has changed - the outlook for proper rock fans was still as dead as a dead dingo's donga! We had some African nonsense (Yeke Yeke), that bloody awful 'Horny' record, 'Flawless (if only!), 'Call On Me,' all that soulless machine-produced tripe, then the ultimate insult, a 'dance remix' of Europe's rock classic 'The Final Countdown'! That Republica song's not bad in a poppy sort of way, but the one shining beacon of real rock music, bestriding the airwaves like a Colossus, was the mighty Metallica's 'Enter Sandman.' More of that and less dancey prancey nonsense next time, mate! JBJ verdict: Dancing's for drongoes, unless it's to the Quo! (2/10)"

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