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It’s now four games without a goal, and while the Bulls’ points total remains stuck in the nervous forties, with more and more clubs with smaller budgets gradually trudging past them on their way to mid-table security, the threat of relegation remains. Boston, having spent most of the season in the relegation zone, are now just a point behind Hereford, and given the form of the two sides you’d be a very brave punter to back the Bulls finishing higher than the Pilgrims. Leamington, who currently occupy the final relegation spot, are just seven points behind. That would be a concern if they were any good, but luckily they’re not, having picked up just two points in their last five matches. If that form continues Hereford are safe, but if Leamington suddenly win one and Hereford lose this, it’s suddenly very dicey.
The Pilgrims gave ex-manager Paul Cox seven months in the job (and a month of this season) to prove his worth before sacking him, bringing in Ian Culverhouse, who also replaced Cox at Kettering. I haven’t checked what Cox is doing now, but if he’s on the make-up counter at Boots in Spalding you’d assume Culverhouse will end up replacing him there too.
Culverhouse has eventually found a way to effect an upturn in the Pilgrims’ progress, with Boston winning five of their last nine games, making them the form team of the bottom half of the table, and distancing them from a relegation threat that’s hung over the club since the start of the season.
Despite that upturn they, and indeed Saturday’s hosts, wouldn’t have envisaged being bottom-halfers by this stage of the season, and both clubs will consider this season to have been one in which no progress has been made. It’s scant consolation to Hereford fans that Boston’s regressive season will have cost more money than Hereford’s.
Despite a very poor season for the club generally, Scott Pollock managed 14 league goals for the club before moving to our old friends Yeovil just a few weeks ago, and ex-York striker Jake Wright has ten. Fellow striker Tre Mitford, who scored for Gloucester at Edgar Street earlier in the season, has been away on international duty this week with Guyana, but is back for this one.
Ex-Bull Ben Pollock has been an ever-present for Boston this season, and will presumably get a good reception from the crowd as a well-liked and fully committed performer. Like Pollock, midfielder Will Atkinson joined the Pilgrims in the summer, from Southend. Probably quite a wise move given the malaise the Shimpers currently find themselves in financially.
Boston scraped into the play-offs last season, where they lost to York in the final. They were hoping, and clearly budgeting, for something a lot more convincing this time around, but it wasn’t to be.
The Pilgrims are typically no strangers to managing the ref and the clock when it suits them, and Culverhouse’s Kings Lynn were the same, so a bit of gamesmanship will probably rear its ugly head at some point here.
And what about Hereford? Well, the Bulls have simply seemingly run out of ideas in the final third of the pitch. Inexplicably Aaron Amadi-Holloway is continuing in defence, when there should now be enough cover, including actual defenders who joined the club to defend rather than sit on the bench watching a player signed as a striker play in central defence, to allow him to play up front and at least offer some hope of a goal.
To echo something Son of Eric alluded to recently, I was very much in the ‘sad to see TOE go’ camp last summer (and I appreciate that there were at least two campsites when it came to that player), and given that he doesn’t seem to be getting a game at Aggborough and his contract’s up in May, and if he’d consider flipping back to part-time (assuming there isn’t going to be an exciting and fully-costed announcement about going full-time at Edgar Street this summer), I’d have him back in a heartbeat and playing just off AAH.
TOE and AAH admittedly sounds like a painful accident involving a sleepy person and the leg of a coffee table, but that’s a front pairing with some potential, one that would put bums on seats and feet on terraces, and that would persuade people to buy season tickets, which in turn funds strengthening in other more boring bits of the pitch that I never think about too much, albeit areas that are quite important, like stopping goals going in.
One consolation to bear in mind is that the final match of the season will be won as it’s against Blyth, and that’s what always happens against Blyth. The only slight fly in that ointment may be that they could have to win to stay up, which would presumably mean they’d be throwing the kitchen sink at it.
Roll on May and a completely fresh start.
COYW