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It’s back to knockabout National League North fun for Hereford FC this Saturday as the greatest football team ever invented this side of Hereford United entertain Kings Lynn.
In typically accurate geographical fashion for the National League ‘North’, Kings Lynn nestles almost precisely halfway between Amsterdam and Hereford, two cities synonymous with rich history and vice (if you were ever a denizen of the Grapes in the 1980s), but not necessarily synonymous with the north of England.
The Linnets are a bogey team, but with Brackley beaten already this season and, to a significantly lesser extent, Peterborough Sports drawn with, bogeys under Paul Caddis are becoming history.
Given that it’s at home, if the opposition have any sense they’ll set up defensively, take a punt on scoring a soft goal on the break, and then set up even more defensively and use multiple substitutes to play both the clock and the referee.
However, they’re a team with top three aspirations so you’d hope they’ll come with more ambition, and as such can be picked off with the sort of counterattacking football this Bulls squad is good at, even if it sticks in the craw a bit having to do that at home.
Sometimes sitting back at home is an approach that can work (beating Brackley last season springs to mind) but sometimes doesn’t (getting completely done by South Shields last season also springs to mind). When it works it’s great, and when it backfires it’s horrible, like one of those chipped penalties. It’s probably just down to luck whether it works or whether it doesn’t, like a lot of things at this level, and actually lots of levels above.
The Linnets, along with Darlington, looked at one point last season like hugely unlikely relegation certainties before belatedly getting their act together. It was a marked deterioration given that the season before they were one of only three clubs that demonstrated any sort of quality or consistency. A policy last season of remaining full-time but seemingly using young full-timers to keep costs down wasn’t conspicuously successful.
To counter that, their marquee signing over the summer was Gold Amatayo, who returned to the club from Kidderminster. It didn’t quite work out for him at the level above for either Harriers or Fylde, but the Swiss martial arts exponent scored 31 in 79 appearances in his last spell with Kings Lynn. He’s got three in eight appearances so far this season, so he hasn’t lost the knack.
Attacking midfielder Josh Hmami was brought in from Southport over the summer, and has ‘looked a player’ at times when visiting Edgar Street previously, and fellow midfielder and new arrival Josh McCammon was one of Peterborough Sports’ better players last season. Another midfielder, Fin Barnes, knows the division well after spells with Scarborough and Darlington. He was yet another new signing in the summer, and the new-look midfield looks like a strong one, capable of both providing the ammo for Amatayo and offering a goal threat in its own right.
The visitors sit in ninth place in the table, but have the same number of points, 13, as Hereford in fifth. Three other clubs are also on 13 points, so a lot could change by 5pm on Saturday. They’ve won just one of their last four league games, but they’ve won away at Marine and Radcliffe, and drawn at Scarborough, so they’re perfectly capable on their travels.
Unless some rapid business is done in the loan market this week, the Hereford bench won’t be unduly tested for its sturdiness on Saturday as there may not be anyone sat on it. Aaron Skinner and Alex Babos both picked up knocks on the plastic on Tuesday, and both will be big misses if those knocks turn out to be more than the ‘bumps and bruises’ variety. They are part of a lengthy injury/not-really-fit list that has quietly grown over the last couple of weeks. As Caddis rightly says though, it would be foolish to rush to take the first loanee offered by an agent with more gift of the gab than a used car salesman.
After Tuesday’s characterful win in the Cup at Ilkeston, Caddis suggested that the ball looked like a size 8. I’ll resist the temptation to suggest that the players demonstrated size 8 balls to get through to the next round as it would be unseemly to do so on a family website (ooops, too late), but nevertheless it was a cracking display of grit, determination and defensive ‘thou shalt not pass-ness’, and of course another away win.
I don’t know if this idea would fly, if only because it could bankrupt the club, but if everyone boycotts this game to give the ground more of a National League North feel, maybe it would encourage the away form to come home.
Home performances have of course been lacking of late, but so has a bit of luck in front of goal at Edgar Street. Hopefully that will change here, and I think Tate will do something grate. There, that’s my prediction.
COYW