Match preview - Southport FC vs Hereford FC

Hereford FC travel to the Costa del Scouse on Tuesday evening for a tricky encounter with Southport, kick off 7:45pm. The Sandgrounders sit two points behind the Bulls in the table, so in those terms it shouldn’t be that tricky, but Hereford are proving to be pretty awful away from home, with the abject 3-2 loss to struggling Bradford last time looking to be more representative of where the club’s at than the earlier 2-0 win at Leamington, which at the time suggested that the stars were aligning and that the new manager was going to turn the potential that's always been lurking in the squad into actual fun performances and actual consistent results. Well, that was a false dawn, with the Bulls getting unceremoniously dumped out of the Cup in the same week as the Bradford defeat.

Bradford reverted to type on Saturday, losing to Gloucester, and the Bulls’ 13-0 win at Hinton looks as meaningless as the tantalisingly attractive promise given by our prime minister that he'd rather die in a ditch before committing himself to telling the truth for once, or something.  

The good news is that Southport seem to win alternate league games, and this time it’s their turn to lose. They also lost on Saturday, 3-1 at home to league rivals Altrincham in the Cup, with the home team’s goal coming merely as a consolation as the game dribbled to a finish. With Alty below Southport in the league, the result would have been a disappointment, but is symptomatic of the Port’s mercurial start to the season. At home, they’ve beaten the likes of Guiseley and Brackley but lost to Telford and struggled to draw with Kettering, so they’re difficult to assess.

One thing that’s certain is that Russell Slade will be doing everything in his power to prevent another shipping of three goals away from home. This will presumably mean that the priority, Marc Richardsesque, is not to lose, and that in turn presumably means one big striker with lots of small midfielders trying to get up in support as a long clearance comes down out of the coastal mist, but to otherwise have men behind the ball at all times. It would be nice to line up in a more attack-minded fashion and play zippy, nippy football-on-the-floor, but while the defence is so utterly easy to breach a more low-risk strategy is understandable.

Ex-Bull Dan Hanford is in the Southport squad, although he’s unlikely to start in goal. That’s not to say he’s likely to start as an outfield player of course, although that might be a tactic that would favour the visitors.

Last season, Southport did the double over Hereford and finished just above the Bulls in mid-table. The 3-0 defeat at Edgar Street was as depressing as it was embarrassing, and the only thing that was more irritating than its depressingness and its  embarrassingness was its inevitabilityness, and in the 1-0 reverse away the visitors never really looked like scoring. Poor old Marc Richards - what a curious, unambitious appointment that was, with the benefit of foresight.
   

However, that's all water, albeit somewhat fetid water, under the bridge. A win would see the Bulls jump to fifth in the table which, to anyone who has been to a match recently, will seem utterly baffling. It does, I suppose, demonstrate that this could be the season to sneak up and out of this division while it’s undergoing an unusually uncompetitive year.

Haig Avenue currently operates under the nom de guerre, or at least the nom de sponsorship, of the Pure Stadium. Hereford’s away performances have generally been dripping with impurity so far this season, but let’s hope that this visit to such a venue of sanctity can inspire something a bit more godlike. After all, miracles do happen.   

COYW