2025/26 Preview - The Opposition: Part One

This is the first of a three-part whistlestop tour of Hereford FC’s National League North opponents for the 2025/26 season. Parts three and two will follow in traditional numerical order over the next few days. This is being published two weeks before the start of the season, so please note that all managers mentioned (apart from Paul Caddis) may have been sacked by the time everything kicks off on 9 August, such is the entirely sane nature of the National League North.

But before all that, a comment on why this matters to nutters like you and me (and with apologies to HUFC fans who totally understandably can’t stand any conflation with HFC)…

The fantastic London Bulls interview with Winston White recently reminded me that I’m old enough and lucky enough to have been a wide-eyed ten-year-old at an HUFC Easter holidays football week in the 1980s witnessing him effortlessly juggling a ball on various bits of his person whilst running at full pace for about fifty metres and then volleying the ball into the net just for lolz as a way to start the team’s training session in the middle of Hereford Racecourse. If Bulls' striker Ollie Kearns, looking on in wide-eyed envy just as I was, had tried something similar he would have ended up in the County Hospital.

This was in the days when the players could jog from the ground to the training pitch in about five minutes - these days they'd have to jog from the ground to Birmingham to train, which if nothing else would keep them fit. 

Anyway, I was gobsmacked. I hadn’t seen audacity like that before because I was from Tupsley, a staid suburb where audacity was (and possibly still is) defined by allowing your front lawn to occasionally grow by a few inches.

The man was and is a legend, and I’ve been hooked ever since, and it’s largely down to that moment on the racecourse. You’ll all have a similar story that’s got you similarly addicted, and that’s why all this is ‘important’ in a way it really, really shouldn’t be.

Let’s ensure over the course of the next nine months that the power of our collective addiction will get us past this bunch of chancers unfit to clean Winston White’s boots…

AFC Fylde

Spent an age (and a small fortune) getting promoted from the NLN, to spend just two seasons bottom-feeding in the National League. Owner David Haythornthwaite has decided to start again with a new manager, Craig Mahon (sent off for Curzon at Edgar Street last season), following relegation.

They have the resources to do well at this level, but just don’t seem to have whatever it takes to make it stick higher up in the way the owner would like, which is to say getting promoted to the Football League. Ultimately, if no-one wants to go and watch you, and you don’t naturally have a catchment of at least a few thousand rather than a few hundred, it’s not going to work, but the male ego can be an intrusive and destructive thing. He’ll therefore be trying again and spending again, blind to the fact that it’s pointless. Good club though, fabulous set-up, do things the right way (although arguably easier to do all that when you’re minted).

Alfreton

On face value, 27-year-old Puerto Rico-based businessman William Rush being appointed as chairman, and 29-year-old Tyler Brangman, based in the USA and coming in as a director, seem to be bafflingly bizarre boardroom moves.

However, this is football, and they could each have grown up in Puerto Rico and the USA respectively with Alfreton Town posters on their bedroom walls. Stranger things have happened…OK, I can’t actually immediately think of anything stranger than that, and I’m really quite capable of thinking of some very strange things.

Wayne Bradley is to remain as a board member but has stepped down as chairman after 27 years in the post. Given that two people in their twenties from many thousands of miles away from Alfreton may be short of local knowledge, Bradley’s presence should be crucial to the continued wellbeing of the club.

Very unusually, uber-canny manager Billy Heath had a bad one last season, as the Reds finished a very long way short of their now habitual play-off spot. On crowds of 500 if they’re lucky, they generally over-achieve, but the new ownership seems odd, and is the sort of formula that usually ends badly.

Club talisman Matt Rhead’s retirement, with the resultant loss of him telling easily manipulated National League North referees which decisions they should be making, has been a big loss and has possibly led to this being a period of treading water and making sure they don’t go down. You wouldn’t bank on it with Alfreton though - they’ll still make both matches against Hereford fairly horrible affairs. Two games requiring a strong performance from the Bulls’ centre backs.

Bedford

This year’s ‘Northern? Whaaaat?’ award goes to Bedford Town (although see Merthyr, later), and in common with ‘manager of the month’ it’s an award that’s often more of a poisoned chalice, in that the poor unfortunates who really should geographically be playing someone reliably southern like Folkestone Invicta are instead forking out money they can’t afford on trips to South (‘South’ yeh right) Shields, counting the days until relegation and games again against Folkestone Invicta. That said, they only win the award by being newcomers – they’re north of both Oxford and Hereford, making the trip to South Shields more or less a local derby.

Manager Lee Bircham has signed a contract to keep him at the club until summer 2027. The new deal comes after back-to-back promotions. He’ll do well to keep them up, let alone secure a hat-trick of upward mobility. There’s a strong suggestion that they’re already regretting the promotion, making them candidates to finish on 20 points or so, four of which would traditionally come against Hereford. Something Paul Caddis will have worked on is not having off-days against the cannon fodder, whilst maintaining in his interactions with the media that there’s no cannon fodder in the NLN and that every game is like playing Liverpool.

Buxton

Full-time Buxton have become a right old weird club. A man, his dog and some away fans go to see them play football each home game which is a shame as they play well. Being full-time and playing in front of not many people is a clever trick if you can pull it off, and they ‘make it work’ in a football economics kind of way, which is to say in a way that would make any sane accountant choke on Sage.

To date, they’ve done it by employing a squad of talented (and cheap) youngsters. However, they’ve now added to those youngsters with a smattering of familiar faces.

Samson Robinson’s departure from Edgar Street and subsequent resurfacing at Buxton was surprising in that he didn’t resurface somewhere a bit more recognisable as a football club, but the signing is certainly a signal of intent. He does deserve a bigger audience though, as does Tate Campbell, who followed him there. Fellow ex-Bull Ryan McLean has also been lured to the Peak District, presumably solely for the lovely fresh air available at altitude rather than the filthy lucre on offer.

The games against this lot will therefore have much more bite than football matches against Buxton should have any right to have. If you can get better than even money on Sammy getting sent off at Edgar Street your turf accountant is a generous soul.

And there was me thinking that Yeovil and Cheltenham were always meh grudge matches. Buxton; it’s come to this, blimey.

Chester

In the wrong division given history and fanbase, although given that everything is skewed these days by men with egos across the country pumping all the profits from their businesses into putting their tiny local club on financial steroids and buying into the seductive dream of finishing 17^th in League 2 each season, history and fanbase count for zip.

However, if you finish above Chester you’re guaranteed some play-off activity at least.

They've been to Northern Ireland pre-season following a trip to the Isle of Man last summer. Marketing-mantra-spouting boss Calum McIntyre explained that these trips are 'for the supporters' in a way that I didn't really understand. He's also been keen to 'hammer home who we are as a group'. If he's focusing on this sort of claptrap rather than telling his players to play the percentages and hit the long diags it can only be a good thing for finishing above them.  

Chorley

Always there or thereabouts, lost to Scunthorpe in the play-offs last season.

Evesham-born Andy Preece is a canny operator, and has been busy over the summer fine-tuning his squad. 21-year-old Jack Moore from Blackpool looks like an interesting signing. He joins a squad including ex-Bulls Mo Touray and Harvey Smith, along with striker Kole Hall, who scored 12 in 35 games for the Magpies last time.

They've been pre-seasoning in Alicante, presumably 'for the supporters'.  

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but if the Bulls finish above Chorley you’d imagine they’ll be in the play-offs, so the trick is to make sure you’re a point ahead of Chorley all season. And Chester.

Curzon Ashton

One of the smaller clubs in the division, but consistently punching above their weight in a very impressive fashion. If you finish a point above Curzon you kind of know you’re in business, as long as you finish a point above Chorley (and Chester) too, in the same way that if you finish a point below Bedford you’re not so much ‘in business’ in National League North terms as ‘Buxton or Kidderminster’s financial sustainability model masquerading as a business’.

However, big changes all round over the summer for the Nash, including being one of many, many NLN clubs with a new manager, so it could be a mid-table transition season for them, unusually.

Darlington

Darlington begins with ‘D’ so they don’t count as a club you need to finish a point ahead of, because, as demonstrated conclusively above, you just need to finish a point above clubs beginning with ‘C’. As ever, they’ll presumably click in March when it’s a bit too late, but if they start well it’ll be a bit of a worry, especially if they change their name to Carlington.