Mark Pougatch, the Five Live presenter, went for a football tour last weekend to watch Hereford and Altrincham. In yesterday's Times he described his journey and what he saw.
There is nothing like variety in life, so six days after sitting in the Emirates Stadium to watch the best two teams in England draw 2-2, I went off last weekend to see grounds of a different hue on my FA Cup odyssey. I chose a picturesque route to Hereford, via Ledbury and its famous Market House, past turnings for villages such as Much Marcle. You don't see signposts like that en route to Old Trafford.
I hadn't been to Edgar Street since the autumn of 1985, when a team of Arsenal dilettantes tiptoed their way through a goalless draw in the League Cup. The ground had not changed much. Chimneys belched out smoke behind the Blackfriars Street End as Alistair the bull made his way lugubriously around the pitch 45 minutes before kick off, with the ground barely half-full. You couldn't help feeling that this was a stunt done to please a live television audience.
Graham Turner, Hereford United's amenable chairman/manager, admitted on Radio 5 Live that the tradition of a fan kicking a swede into the goal before the game had been scrapped, "because it made us look too much like yokels".
After Hereford it was on to Altrincham, who are noted as the biggest giant-killers of all nonLeague teams. I immediately ran into Graham Heathcote, manager of the Alty (as everybody calls them). Heathcote played in some of their famous FA Cup wins and his programme notes were a real carpe diem rallying call. Geoff Goodwin, the chairman, drove the Australia cricketers around in one of his coaches on the 2005 Ashes tour and told us that Glenn McGrath came over recently to play in a charity football match. "He was playing up front with me and he never left my side," Goodwin said, with a laugh. "He had no idea what to do."
Alty lost on the pitch, but they won off it with the warmth of their welcome and Turner summed up the thoughts of the millions not obsessed with the Barclays Premier League when he said: "The game matters as much to the fans of Hereford [and, by extension, Altrincham] as it does to those of Chelsea and Manchester United. Just because the clubs are smaller, it doesn’t mean the passion is less."
Text at top (next game etc)
Next Game: Brentwood In The FA Trophy At Edgar Street On Saturday 16th November At 3.00pm