Hereford and Lymington try again to settle their second qualifying round FA Cup tie on Tuesday night at Edgar Street, following a disappointing 2-2 draw on the Hampshire coast on Saturday. It wasn’t the result supporters were hoping for, unless they were quite weird supporters, but it does mean that the Bulls are still in the competition, and now have the opportunity to score a few goals and boost confidence before Saturday’s home league game against Leamington.
That’s not to say that this will be a simple matter of turning up though, even if Craig Stanley’s 38-year-old legs will be sorely tested by back-to-back matches. With the memory of that 2019 penalty shoot-out replay exit to Tamworth still giving me nightmares, complacency is far from being a dominant feeling here. However, if Lymington are to capitulate it can be fairly safely assumed that it won’t be due to being intimidated by a large crowd. There should be plenty of scope for social distancing in the stands and on the terraces for this match, given the start to the season.
With Krystian Pearce and Levi Andoh added to the defence, the sort of individual errors and general porousness that have cost the Bulls dear so far this season, and did so again on Saturday, will hopefully soon be eradicated, although whether Pearce will be risked here or rested for Saturday, following a precautionary early withdrawal at the weekend, remains to be seen.
Goals conceded at Lymington’s level come more often from self-inflicted mistakes rather than a moment of brilliance from the opposition. That becomes less of a trend as you get up to National League North and higher. If Hereford keep bucking that trend by conceding Lymington-level goals from Lymington-level mistakes things aren’t going to be too clever.
At the other end of the pitch, Bristol Rovers youngster Ollie Hulbert will hopefully provide some much-needed support for Dan Smith up front, or possibly, with the number of good players in the squad capable of playing in attacking positions but not as out-and-out strikers, he'll be competing with the Eastleigh loanee for a starting place as the one out-and-out striker the team has room for.
Given that the squad is structured in such a way as to allow room only for one target man (and I personally quite like that given the talent there is in attacking midfield/wide roles), that target man does have to be quite good, and has a fair amount of responsibility on his shoulders. Whether a loanee would be that arsed to embrace that level of responsibility, even if he was quite good, is a moot point. I absolutely never seek to target individuals here, but the point is worth reiterating that the club's current target man has scored two goals in 37 games for Eastleigh.
Tom Owen-Evans, although it was against
more-or-less pub-league opposition on Saturday (no disrespect to the blessed
Craig Stanley there as he sees out his playing career on the south coast),
looked to be coming back post-Covid to the sort of form that should see him get
somewhere close to his ten-goals-and-ten assists personal target for the
season. TOE has, in the past, done a great deal of the heavy lifting up front
for this club when there wasn’t a lot else in the squad to support him, much
like Gavin Williams at an admittedly higher level a few years back, and now
with one or two other threats for defenders to worry about he could score and
assist more freely. Such an asset when fit and firing, and he isn't lumbered with that horrible black-and-white-quartered kit that SuperGav was.
With Lymington now well aware of, and hugely concerned about, the pace of Miles Storey, there should be plenty of room for TOE and others to exploit if the visitors put a couple of defenders on Mr Storey.
James Vincent and Zeli Ismael were both out injured over the weekend, but supporters would be buoyed by either or both returning to feature in some capacity here, given that they could be among the more influential elements in turning round the club’s joyless start to the season. Having said that, Vincent has yet to live up to his pre-season billing as the puller of strings in midfield in his performances so far. Early days yet, of course.
There's the massive carrot of Mertsham away in the next round, and if that doesn't set the pulse racing I don't know what would. Mertsham are the sort of devil-may-care club who have decided that they can't be bothered to spell official properly when describing their own website. Either that or they're a little bit tinpot.
Nice smooth progress into the next round would be lovely here, no panicky defending, no dramas, and certainly no shoot-outs.
COYW