On the plus side, Kettering are
really pretty bad at playing football, but on the minus side the town isn’t in
Yorkshire, the county that’s played host to the dramatic Bulls turnaround over
the last week. However, the former looks far more relevant to the outcome of
this one than the latter, and Hereford should travel confidently.
This is the third attempt to
get the match played, following a late postponement originally, and then the
midweek rearranged fixture falling foul of Ciara-or-Dennis, can’t remember
which. Pretty sure it wasn’t Jorge though, who ended up being a bit rubbish,
thankfully. It’s safe to say that the Latimer Park surface will again be a bit
of a pudding, but hopefully not too much of a leveller.
Kettering are now seven points
behind the Bulls following the latter’s recent renaissance, but with four games
in hand. Those games are largely irrelevant though, because if drawing at home
to Gloucester, as the Poppies did on Saturday, is a reliable form guide,
they’re not going to be winning many of the games they play anyway. That has
certainly been the case recently, with no win in their last six. They’ve also been
held to draws by hapless Blyth twice this season. Like Hereford, they’ve won
just four of their home matches. Striker Omari Sterling-James was brought in on
loan from Mansfield before the Gloucester game in a bid to increase the threat
up front, as the club has struggled to score all season.
The Bulls own woes on that
front have at least temporarily been put to bed, with Lenny J-L and Kelsey
Mooney developing an explosive attacking partnership reminiscent of the Phillips-Kearns,
White-Cross, Bobble-Stock, Guinan-Brown and Mills-Haysham combos of yore.
OK, one of those didn’t happen,
but I’d love it to sometime in the future. I’d definitely buy a ‘Bobble 9’
shirt.
Behind those two, Tom
Owen-Evans continues to enjoy a golden autumn to his season and Martin Riley
continues to be a brave and valuable presence at the back. The squad boasted
four double-barrelled names on Saturday – how posh is that? In fact if you
count the ‘O’ in O’Sullivan it was five. Older readers will remember when half
the team was called Mark Jones. How dull in comparison.
A single Jordan Nicholson goal
was enough for the Bulls to take the points at Edgar Street when these two met
in September, and another win would lift Hereford to 13th in the
table, with a top-half finish within reach. Oh, and if the winning run
continues until the end of the season, the Bulls would finish on 65 points,
enough last year to take the final play-off position. Just saying, like.
COYW