Six-Match Mini-Season - GO!

Well, no luck up north last Saturday as the seven-match all-or-nothing mini-season kicked off at Fylde, but that defeat was plain bad luck and needn’t dent anyone’s confidence going into something of a make-or-break Easter weekend for Hereford FC based much further south. Similar performances against Telford on Good Friday and Gloucester on Easter Monday should deliver some juicy play-off points, and realistically two wins from these two matches is the bare minimum needed. Four or five wins from them would be much better.

But is this all-or-nothing mini-season actually all-or-nothing in the bigger scheme of things? Even if the Bulls end up falling short of play-off qualification, could this new more attacking, less risk-averse approach provide a valuable blueprint for a tactical shift in August? Goalscoring has been a perennial problem, and that’s quite a big problem if you’re a football team. Other than Tom Owen Evans, who has arguably been alone in weighing in with his fair share of goals, no-one used up front, apart from perhaps Jaanai Gordon, has been the sort of player who gambles on balls being put into the corridor of uncertainty. In fact, the only player who has been arsed to get himself into that corridor recently has been holding midfielder Ryan Lloyd against Alfreton, to meet a textbook winger’s cross delivered by a centre-back. All of that is all sorts of wrong, but seeing that Egan cross and Lloyd finish gave a stark reminder of how seldom the people who should have been combining in such a way haven’t.

It would be good next season if Ryan Lloyd didn’t have to do everyone else’s job for them, and for a winger and striker to be found who are certain about where the corridor of uncertainty is. With a more attacking mindset, a bit more urgency, a bit more intensity, a less laboured build-up, it might be easier to turn defences around rather than just play in front of them. OK, you might concede a few on the break if you’re a bit more gung-ho, but that’s happened lots of times this season anyway with a more conservative approach. None of this is to suggest that the way forward, in both senses, is for long balls to be pumped up to some massive giant who allows the ball to bounce off him at pace either into the net or into the path of some secondary clogger following up who can’t miss. There is, I’m sure, a middle ground.

With Edgar Street admission prices set to rise, petrol more expensive than Weston’s Vintage, and the use of electricity becoming aspirational, something’s got to attract the impoverished Herefordshire public to matches next season, and one thing that might is the sort of attacking football that’s being touted as the product to round off this season.

Good Friday’s Easter lambs to the slaughter as the new attacking Bulls mindset kicks in are Telford. It's been a long and largely fruitless season for the Bucks. They’re unbeaten in six and sit four points clear of bottom-of-the-table Guiseley, although with only two of those six matches ending in wins a lingering relegation threat still hangs over them.

My spy in the camp reports that the Bucks are now a very different team to the full-on clown show (his words) that they were ten games into the season, but still haven't ironed out their propensity to chuck the odd custard pie in their own faces.

Mace Goodrich is a good young player with quick feet and an eye for goal, and Jordan Piggot and Harry Flowers have been good deadline day signings who have contributed to the aforementioned reduction in clowning. Reiss McNally, who looked useful when on loan with Hereford earlier in the season, could start for the visitors.

Striker Jason Oswell sits alongside Tom Owen Evans in the National League North goalscoring charts on 12, and in 2017/18 scored 25 in 40 appearances for Stockport, which is none too shabby. Good age, awkward and elbowy, tallish but not ridiculously so, not fat, presumably no stranger to the corridor of uncertainty, possibly lives reasonably locally…just saying.

Oswell is presumably the player who was keeping Andre Wright out of the Telford starting XI, and the new Bulls striker should be looking forward to this one against his previous club, and it’s surely written in the stars that he’ll score.

Next season could be a completely different story for Telford, with Music Magpie magnate Walter Gleeson putting a bundle of cash into the club. A relatively recent immigrant to Shropshire, Gleeson to his credit obviously saw little point in getting into bed with the Sloppies. It’s just a shame he didn’t look a little further south.

Two wins over Easter and things may start to look very exciting, although you just know that if the Bulls start to click and win so will one or two others. However, from here on in all they can do is throw caution to the wind, and if that ends up in a 5-4 loss so be it – it might be more entertaining than a tactically astute 1-1 draw.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this new attacking approach, and hope it pays off here. After last Saturday, Josh Gowling and the players deserve a reward for giving it one last push.

COYW