Saturday offers a break from the travails of life in
National League North for Hereford FC, although trekking across the country to
top-of-the-table King’s Lynn for what could be a brief participation in this
year’s FA Trophy is more like a break in Bognor than Barbados.
A promising start and some sparks of life thereafter in the
Altrincham defeat once more illustrated the apparent inability of the Bulls to play well
throughout a whole match. It’s a problem that pre-dates Russell Slade, indeed
it’s been a problem for the duration of the club’s time in the NLN, but it
seems that what previously might have been 45-minute periods of relative quality
are now five- or ten-minute glimpses of what might be possible with this squad
in a parallel universe.
The Bulls' four losses in their last five league games makes for somewhat messy reading, and
is form that contrasts sharply with the Linnets' four wins in five, a run which saw them score 16 goals and edge past York in the
table at the weekend, although York have a game in hand. Lynn have scored 42 goals this season in total, compared to York's 28.
The club's 19-goal striker Adam Marriott tops the divisional goalscoring chart for
the season, and is ably supported up front by Michael Gash, a player
with an uncanny knack of scoring against Hereford. Gash returns well rested following suspension last week. If neither of those
two find a way to breach the Bulls' sieve-like defence it'll be the shock
of the round.
There’s not really much point rehearsing the negatives that currently plague the Whites here
again as the board, management, supporters and hopefully the players are well aware
of the issues, and it’s impossible to pin the current malaise solely on any one thing.
Taking a punt on a cut-price management team to replace Pete Beadle undoubtedly
killed all momentum, and that oft-quoted ‘level of expectation’ could be a
factor, but recent events on the field have done more than enough to send
everyone’s levels of expectation through the floor, so that one’s been resolved
at least. Extensively recruiting from the National League South may be
geographically expedient but has resulted in a high rate of failure, even when
the players have come to the club with good reputations, in some cases as captains of their previous clubs. That said, the likes of Reece Styche and Rowan Liburd have come in from fellow
NLN clubs with solid goalscoring reputations at those clubs, but have similarly
failed to make an impression to date at Edgar Street. Maybe therefore it’s
simply that there’s something fundamentally broken somewhere in the club
infrastructure that infects players soon after their arrival. Who knows?
In the league match between these two earlier in the season
in deepest Norfolk, the hosts effortlessly achieved the par score of three
goals for a home side against Hereford this season with a 3-1 win.
So, the omens don’t look good, but only crackpots rely on
omens, so let's consider the positives. The aforementioned Styche and Liburd
return following their international shenanigans, giving Slade some much needed
cards to play with up front. Now would be a very good time for both to start
showing what they’re capable of. What else? Kieran Thomas will hopefully be back. Oh, and the season has of course largely been a wretched one to date, with very few high
notes, but at least it can’t get any worse than the last two games, it really,
really can’t, and the darkest hour is the one just before dawn, although that's apparently nonsense. However, with nothing else to cling to I'm going with it. A new dawn therefore begins with an unlikely win here, followed by a decent run in the tournament
triggering a resurgence in league form and some life and momentum returning to Edgar Street, because currently it’s all as flat as a pancake.
COYW