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What a treat on Tuesday to see five of the best goals scored at Edgar Street this season, although admittedly two of them went in the wrong end. Now, after the beauty of those finishes, comes the beast, in the form of Alfreton Town.
Part of the charm of this Saturday's visitors is that they identify individual threats in the opposition XI and attempt to kick them out of the game (see treatment of Jordan Lyden last season). Alfreton manager Billy Heath will instruct his players to target Jaiden White, and as ever against the Reds a strong no-nonsense referee would be a help. As ever, we almost certainly won’t get one, so it’ll be important for captain Lewis Hudson, or whoever is deputising if he’s rotated, to constantly remind the referee to be aware of Alfreton’s tactics. If they do target White, it could give Yusifu Ceesay on the other flank a bit more room than is usual to inflict some damage on his former club.
The Reds do what they do and they do it well. They do it to be competitive as a small club with tiny home crowds, and generally it’s an approach recently that has worked, resulting in play-off participation in each of the last two seasons. Heath is now in his seventh season of giving post-match interviews describing something very different to what everyone else saw.
They go into this one needing to bounce back from a poor run that has seen them lose eight of their last ten games. They lost 3-1 at Spennymoor on Tuesday. However, it should be noted that they’re better away than they are at home.
As a result of that run, they’re not sitting as high in the table as they normally would be at this stage of the season, and look to be missing the likes of ex-Bull and different-club-every-season merchant Ken Digie, who moved up a division in the summer with Tamworth, and Matt Rhead, for several seasons something of a club talisman.
Their mid-table no-man’s-land position is surprising given that as ever they recruited shrewdly pre-season, which in fairness is far more of a contributary factor in their recent success than any perceived unsavoury tactics on the pitch. Big ex-Telford and Alvechurch Dutch midfielder Jed Abbey arrived at the Impact Arena in the summer from South Shields, and central defender Max Hunt seems to have played for every semi-pro club in Derbyshire, and actually Derby itself. He’s also found the time to venture south for spells with our old friends Yeovil and Aldershot. He’s managed three goals this season, presumably getting on the end of corners and booming free kicks with his noggin.
In addition to those summer recruits, earlier this month they brought in Sam Osborne, who had moved from Buxton to Boston in the summer. Although his stay in Lincolnshire at a higher level was short-lived he did well there. The midfielder is a talent at tier 6 and is their one to watch here - an excellent mid-season acquisition.
Goalkeeper George Willis, timewaster par excellence over the last few seasons, and unchecked as such entirely by referees, seems recently to have sped up a bit with his goal kicks even when his team isn’t losing. Maybe he’s gained a conscience, and when he isn’t wasting time he’s a very good goalkeeper. However, he’s an injury doubt here, and his crown, incidentally, seems to have been taken by the Kidderminster goalie, and if he hadn’t messed about to a ridiculous degree (quite bafflingly when they were winning 3-0) on Boxing Day I hate to think what the score might have been.
Alfreton are something of a bogey team for the Bulls, but with oodles of points gained from Kings Lynn, Brackley and Peterborough Sports this season, the notion of bogey teams has by and large been put to bed by the Caddis regime.
The Bulls have now won six in seven, and suddenly sit in fifth position in the table - quite exciting given that it’s nearly March. That recent run has heightened the possibility that the last two games of the season, against Kidderminster and Scunthorpe, could be the biggest in the phoenix club’s history, although of course it’s a mug’s game to look too far ahead in the National League North.
There was a bit of confidence and even swagger in the build-up to and execution of Jaiden White’s opener against Warrington, and that has been a real rarity in Hereford’s NLN years to date, as the club has struggled to compete with ‘smaller’ clubs with bigger playing budgets.
The arrival of Temaye Campbell has made a huge difference already. The second goal on Tuesday came from having a player with a true poacher’s instincts, whereas before his arrival that inviting ball in would have fizzed across the box and out for a goal kick, with no-one gambling on being there to finish it off.
Sammy Robinson continues to thrive in a more influential position, and will presumably pull the strings again here, but will also relish the physical challenge presented by Alfreton, although hopefully not to the extent that he gets booked as he’s on the verge of getting a two-match ban.
The visitors’ one-dimensional approach is predictable but has historically been difficult to beat. The Bulls defence will have to show some gutsy resilience in the face of a bombardment of long throws, long diags, and long spells of lying down faking injury if the Reds are drawing or leading.
A tough one
then, with Kyle Howkins and Matt Preston needing to be stand-out performers,
which they have been so often this season already.
COYW