Continuing BN's look back at the last week of the 1996/97 season, here's an article from the Independent, published on Saturday May 3rd 1997, which previews the relegation decider:
Believe it or not, there are two clubs facing the threat of relegation from the Football League today.
By
now, the world and his Jack Russell knows that Brighton are facing the
drop, and for the last few weeks civilisation, at least that part of it
between London and the South Coast, seems to have been in shock at the
prospect.
Despite all the hullabaloo over Brighton,
Hereford are also facing the drop and today's game with the Seagulls at
Edgar Street will decide which of the two plunges over the precipice.
Unlike
Brighton, Hereford have not had the huge amount of sympathetic media
attention to whip up support, probably because it is not within
commuting distance of London, it isn't supported by Des Lynam or any
other celebrity, not even Tony Gubba, and it doesn't have the huge
number of glory fans that the South Coast club has attracted in its 90
minutes of need.
As far as everyone outside Hereford is
concerned, there are only two possible results today: Brighton go down
or Brighton stay up.
Now Hereford may not be in the
golden triangle of the South-east, or in a northern oasis like
Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, but it is a good, solid, honest
club, the meat and two veg of middle England football and the Third
Division, and it deserves to survive in the League.
Hereford
is a traditional family club where the fans don't riot, don't invade
the pitch, don't get hauled away by the police or get banned, and don't
court publicity. It is true that in times of adversity the odd fist is
shaken in the direction of the directors, who, incidentally, still sit
under the same corrugated roofs as the rest of us - no executive boxes
here - but that is the limit of any antisocial behaviour.
Hereford
is a club where jokes about linesmen leaving their spectacles at homes
still raise a chuckle, where mints are exchanged between strangers,
where the Cornish pasties are still served brittle-black at the edges
from old-fashioned warming cabinets, and where burning-hot Oxo is the
favourite half-time tipple.
Twenty-five years ago, when
Hereford burst into the Football League and were then subsequently
promoted within a season under Colin Addison, they brought a breath of
fresh air to the stagnant old Fourth Division, which was then almost
impossible to get into because outsiders had to be elected rather than
promoted.
For people like Frank Miles, who was club
chairman when United were elected, and Addison, now managing Merthyr
Tydfil, and for today's fans like my son, Ben, the only student who
commutes from Manchester to Hereford to watch decent football, the drop
into the GM Vauxhall Conference would be a disaster and one from which
the club might never recover.
The club's managing
director, Robin Fry, has said the playing staff will remain full- time
should the unthinkable happen today, in a bid to get back into the
League at the first attempt. But with little spare money around and with
crowds even in the League running at around a lowly 3,000, the
prospects in the Conference would not be good.
For 25
years Hereford have been a more useful member of the League than clubs
that have bumped around the bottom for the best part of a century and
rarely achieved anything. True, the trophy cupboard at Edgar Street is a
little light and we have had a few near misses in the relegation zone
over the last few years, but last season, don't forget, we were in the
play-offs for promotion from the Third Division.
Clubs
like Hereford are what football should be all about: places where you
can watch 90 minutes of football for a fair price on terraces where
supporters curse and moan about their team much of the time and then
spend the remainder cheering them on.
There are no big
businesses or millionaires vying for boardroom power at Hereford. We do
not - thank God - have too many glory supporters and we certainly don't
have much money.
When the game kicks off today, it will
be almost as evenly balanced as it is possible to get. Both clubs have
46 points. Hereford have the worst home record, while the visitors
Brighton hold the worst away record.
The stakes are
high, but for the sake of small clubs with loyal, law- abiding fans, for
clubs who are not fashionable or rich, and for clubs who never get
mentioned on Match of the Day, Hereford should and must win.
But if Hereford go down today, the League will be a poorer place.
