With HFC fixtures disappearing
from traditional slots like 3pm on a Saturday, and managers being appointed
annually, it all seems very glam and Premier League at Edgar Street these days.
However, St Kitts, St Nevis and even dare I say it Gibraltar are going to have
to take a backseat this weekend, because time waits for no woman or man when
‘Guiseley away’ looms large on the horizon. Indeed, those two words transcend
all international boundaries, FIFA, UEFA, Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
If Guiseley had applied for the
World Cup that Qatar won fairly and squarely, they would have got the nod and run
it from Nethermoor Park, and it would have been really good, and cooler, in
every conceivable way. What Guiseley wants, Guiseley gets, and Guiseley wants
our swanky international glamourpusses to return from those exotic foreign
outposts and get back at last to a bread and butter, blood, guts and thunder
game of football in God’s own Yorkshire on Saturday, and if a Yorkshire fry-up
isn’t made of bread, butter, blood, guts and thunder I’m a Dutchman.
This season’s Bulls manager has
turned out to be someone everyone’s heard of, and is a full-time football
person who has managed Football League clubs. The consensus seems to be that
this is therefore a better approach for a club with stated ambitions of going
full-time with a view to getting back to the Football League than going for a
manager who already had a full-time job in education, which was last year’s
approach.
Common sense seems to have broken
out then, seemingly a rare commodity of late. It’s still not entirely clear how
Tim Harris’s middle-man role fits into the general scheme of things, but no
doubt everything will iron itself out by Christmas.
Last season, Guiseley were
really dreadful, but luckily for them so were Hereford, and luckily for both of
them there were a clutch of teams who were considerably worse in a season in
which you would have had to start chopping your players’ legs off to get
relegated. Many of the poor souls who witnessed last season’s Hereford vs
Guiseley match at Edgar Street are still
in therapy, and that was a win.
But that was then and this is
now. Russell Slade has cleverly found a club that pays well but doesn’t play football
matches very often. His record thus far has therefore been superb, in that
after a fortnight or so he remains unbeaten. However, the hard work starts
here.
Guiseley have started well,
currently sitting in fifth position and looking to have the potential to put
the aberration of last season behind them and bid to return to the National
League Premier. The Lions’ stay there last time in 2017/18 was brief and
traumatic, with them finishing bottom and winning only seven matches all
season.
However, this term they’ve
impressively beaten King’s Lynn 3-0 and drawn with York. Trying to look on the
bright side, they have, like Hereford, played a lot of the strugglers so far,
which may mean that their league position flatters them. That said, any
flattering is due to the fact that they’ve beaten those strugglers. Last time
out they lost to Chester, but then who doesn’t, as the latter increasingly look
to have found a formula full of promotion juice. Over the years, when they get
it right, Chester really do get it right, before getting it wrong again quite
quickly.
It won’t need a laptop or
indeed rocket science to figure out the main threat to the Bulls’ goal on
Saturday. Striker Aaron Martin has already scored a scary-looking eleven goals
this season, including a hat-trick against Bradford Park Avenue, making him the
highest scorer in the English leagues.
As far as Hereford are concerned,
the three wanderers return and are back in contention, but Jason Pope and
Martin Riley are out injured, the former with a minor knock and the latter with
a shoulder injury that could keep him out for six weeks, prompting Slade to
hint that he’ll be looking to bring defensive reinforcements in.
All in all then it’s looking
like a challenging opener for the new boss. There’s a squad of players in that
HFC dressing room somewhere waiting to come out and be competitive. The
consensus among fans seems to be that the new manager is the man to coax it out
of them, with the addition of a few loanees perhaps if the budget allows, and he's a much better appointment than might have been expected.
Welcome to the club Russell and
good luck. All you need to do is play constant attacking football, score lots
of goals, win lots of matches, gain successive promotions and persuade the
board and council to turn the Blackfriars End into something akin to the
southern terrace at Borussia Dortmund. You will then, a decade or so later, gain
some begrudging respect from some quarters a la Graham Turner. Most will still
wonder why you didn’t ‘sort it out’ on more occasions during games though.
COYW