Total Football

Hereford FC kick off their 2022/23 season at home against Spennymoor Town at Edgar Street on Saturday. Despite it being a long trek down from Durham for the visitors, it should be a stiff opening test for the Bulls.

After teasing us for months last season with the prospect of scrambling to a seventh-placed finish and qualification for the play-offs following a frustratingly slow start, it all petered out a bit. As momentum built, key players in building that momentum were poached by National League North rivals. Lessons will hopefully have been learned from that, and even though the budget is presumably still as shoestring as ever, perhaps the squad builder cash injection has gone some way to putting a few more players on contracts for the season, thus protecting them from the predatory clutches of rival clubs. 

The Moors are one of the clubs in the NLN to have the resources to keep a core squad in place long term. Midfielders Rob Ramshaw, Jamie Chandler and Mark Anderson have been with the club since 2016. Ace marksman Glen Taylor has been there a year longer, scoring 100 league goals for them in that time. Taylor and Ramshaw recently signed new contracts to stay at the club until 2024.

That sort of continuity, and the budget required to allow it, are alien concepts at Edgar Street, and with gate receipts seemingly of secondary importance when it comes to spending power at this level, the Bulls will continue to be watched by lots more paying customers than most in the division, but will nevertheless be something of a poor relation to the likes of Spennymoor and Brackley, with the latter attracting home crowds of 500. It’s frustrating and slightly confusing for a simpleton like me (just how much of a loss gets written off at Brackley each season?), but nevertheless it just seems to be how things are.

Encouragingly, Spennymoor lost 1-0 at home to a Coalville side that got beaten 5-0 by Hereford in pre-season. They’re now managed by Bernard Morley and Anthony Johnson, whose managerial currency still seems high at this level despite them failing at Chester.

The Bulls’ new-look defence (apart from Jared Hodgkiss at right back) will do well to keep Glen Taylor quiet, and I’m still not totally sure about Luke Haines as a central defender. This, however, is irrelevant, because I know precisely nothing about football whereas Josh Gowling has played hundreds of games professionally as a central defender, and he seems convinced. What seems certain is that Haines and ex-Telford newcomer Zak Lilly will be among the better footballing central defensive pairings in the division, in fact they won’t be too far off being the only footballing central defensive pairing in the division. Even new goalie Brad Wade likes to see himself as a ball-playing keeper. I’m not remotely old enough to remember, but surely even the Dutch ‘total football’ side of the 70s didn’t have a goalie who could ‘play a bit’? (If they did please don’t write in to mention it). It does seem that this season’s squad will make the Barcelona and Spain tiki-taka teams of a few years ago look like Leamington. Could be lovely to watch and produce goals at the same time, could be lovely to watch but grind to a halt at the business end of the pitch, could produce some over-elaboration-induced head-in-hands defensive howlers.

Olu Durojaiye’s mysterious departure this week before the season has even started has left something of a lack of any muscular counterbalance to having actual footballers all over the pitch. Who, for instance, will now be Harry Pinchard’s minder in midfield? There’s still time (just) for this to be rectified of course, but it means that we’re entering the same sort of territory that caused problems early last season – Hereford players getting to know each other during actual, proper football matches. This is of course very different to Moors’ midfield having played together for six years. The chirman Jon Hale has suggested that the squad builder has propelled the squad to the next level. Unless a couple more first-team-ready signings are made before Saturday, I'm not sure that's necessarily the case just yet. Of course, there could be a couple of Jarrod Bowens in the youth team.

Up front, Ty Barnett does offer a bit of presence, something that’s been lacking in that position for absolutely ages, and that alone should create more chances for the likes of Miles Storey and Ryan McLean, both of whom will be looking to improve their goals-to-chances conversion rate this time, and newcomer Lekan Osideko, who could be absolutely anything.

A 2,000 gate saw the Bulls lose to Farsley Celtic in the opening match of last season. It would be nice to think that the 2,500 who came to watch Arsenal a few weeks ago come back for this one, and witness a home side hitting the ground running rather than looking a bit pre-seasonish, as was the case in that Farsley game. If so, this could result in a win and an early confidence boost going into the trip to Scarborough next weekend, and that’ll be one to target for more success as they’re favourites for relegation.

However, before we look too far ahead, there’s that lovely feeling of first-day-of-the-season pre-3pm optimism to look forward to. Here’s to a barnstorming opener and a season of huge success for the big club with no money.

COYW