Well, things are starting to get back to the stage where one is full of trepidation rather than belief in the build-up to a Hereford FC football match, with the Bulls losing three out of three at home now as the National League North season moves from summer to autumn (even though autumn has felt more summery than summer did this week) and results-wise everything is really wintry.
Luckily, when things are looking grim, there’s always a trip to York to turn things around. Fans will remember that there was little hope of coming back with anything from Bootham Crescent in March 2020, as the Bulls had failed to beat anyone in the two months preceding that match, and contrived to lose to Lads Club the week before. Contrastingly the Minstermen at the time were top of the table, but after one of the best performances yet displayed by the phoenix club a 4-1 win saw the points return south.
But of course there’s a but, as Hereford travel again on Saturday to York and their shiny new stadium, and it’s quite a big but. Lenell John-Lewis was a very good striker at this level. His performance in that match last year was hugely accomplished, scoring a couple and looking way too good for NLN defenders. Current loanee centre forward Dan Smith, however, has yet to show anything to suggest that he’s too good for NLN defenders. In his career to date he scored freely for Bognor Regis Town in the Isthmian Premier Division whilst on loan from Pompey (for whom he never played), but has scored just two goals in 37 appearances for parent club Eastleigh. He has so far shown the form of a player who can’t get a game at Eastleigh (a club currently sitting close to the bottom of the division above with a solitary point from three games). With this being his third full game for the Bulls, his fitness should now be there, so perhaps this will be his time to start shining, and admittedly he might be more shiny if he’s not left so isolated, as alluded to by Miles Storey after the Spennymoor defeat. Incidentally, talking of his fitness, our centre forward is listed online as weighing 18.5 stone. Therein may lie the problem – bound to be true if it’s on the internet, although he does carry it well.
New signing Krystian Pearce didn’t make his debut last Saturday, reportedly due to an issue with the FA, but will hopefully bring some solidity and reliability to the back four in this one and for the rest of the season. It does sound like it will have been worth the wait when he does finally get started. In addition to The Chief, there’s a suggestion that another centre half could join the club for this match.
York started the season slowly, losing their first three but winning their next two, against Spennymoor away and then Farsley at home. They scored seven goals in those wins, compared to Hereford’s no goals against the same opponents. However, their 4-0 loss to Gloucester makes them 13 goals worse than Chorley, and that’s probably what I’d stick on the dressing room wall in big letters before the game if I was Josh Gowling.
York are of course a big fish in this pond and are expected to go well this season. Ex-Fylde striker Kurt Willoughby is a massive threat, alongside veteran thoroughbred Clayton Donaldson. When comparing strikers of that calibre with the attacking threat offered by Hereford, with the best will in the world there does seem to be something of a disparity.
I can’t remember if it’s supposed to be six or ten games by which time any luck should have evened itself out and a true impression can be gained about where a club is at. If it’s six the Bulls need to get about ten points from this match to be somewhere close to play-off form. That’s a tough ask in anyone’s book. The club’s two points gained on the road to date keep them from being bottom of the table, although Darlington, yet to get off the mark, have two games in hand. Not good. However, Curzon Ashton, Kettering and Blyth, who are all normally reliably terrible, are all in the top eight, so maybe the table is still fibbing a bit, even though it’s supposed to be reaching the reliability stage.
It no longer feels like it’s only a matter of time before everything clicks and a quality squad starts to put together a winning run, almost as an inevitability. This squad now has something to prove, and isn’t good enough by right to win football matches.
Older fans will reluctantly remember matches between these two clubs as they battled for the right to finish 17th in Canon League Division 4 in front of 1700 fans thanking their lucky stars that the re-election system was still in place. At the time the clubs were much of a muchness in terms of resources, but given the strikeforce comparison above that no longer seems to be the case despite a similar fanbase, and as unpalatable as it may seem to be such underdogs in a match against York City, it’s something that just has to be sucked up for now, like being many divisions lower than Cardiff, Newport and the Slop.
Early days still of course, and there’s nothing like a late rattle up the table to get you through the dark weeks of winter. 4-1 will do here.
COYW