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On Saturday Hereford FC play the second of three consecutive games against Tigers, with this one against the Worksop Tigers sandwiched between the two against the Tigers of Sporting Khalsa.
Weirdly, Worksop claim to have been founded in 1861, which would make them the fourth oldest football club on the planet. The weird bit is that it doesn’t seem to be true. There’s evidence to suggest that they were kicking a football around as far back as 1875 though, which is still a good deal more impressive than MK Dons’ history.
They came up from the Northern Premier League last season behind runaway winners Macclesfield. So far this season, they’ve adapted well at home but not so well away. They’ve lost three of their four away league games, at Merthyr, Macclesfield and Radcliffe.
They were also dumped out of the Cup last weekend at Harborough Town, losing 3-2 after leading 2-0 (and missing a penalty to make it 3-0). Hopefully that will be more of a deflator than a wake-up call. Manager Craig Parry’s assessment of the performance was that “Kids wouldn’t defend like that.”
Sounds promising and, er, a little bit familiar.
That fallibility away from home coupled with an inability against Harborough to defend long throws could be handy, with Hereford unusually (albeit briefly) in possession of a long-throw exponent in the form of loanee Michael Parker. Incidentally, this could be Parker’s penultimate game in a Bulls shirt, unless his loan spell is extended.
Captain Luke Waterfall lines up in defence for Worksop alongside Terry Oxbow Lake and Bert Fountain. OK, he doesn’t but it would be good if he did. Alongside Mr Waterfall, in reality, ex-Scarborough and Matlock defender Baily Gooda has played well against the Bulls before, attacking midfielder Liam Hughes has a couple of goals already this season, and Hamza Bensherif, although an unlikely starter, at 37 years old has bags of Football League experience.
However, the big danger is ‘imposing’ striker Aaron Martin, with five goals this season. ‘Imposing’ generally means he’ll be the one that poor old Kyle Howkins will be tasked with looking after. Martin is supported up front by Jordan Burrow, a thoroughly capable striker at this level.
It was good to see that the goal that didn’t quite come for I-Lani Edwards against Alfreton a few weeks ago finally did come last weekend at Sporting Khalsa. Hopefully that will open the floodgates now and he’ll get into double figures for the season before his return to Villa in the summer.
Willo also continues to look well in the mood for it generally this season, and Paul Caddis has the luxury of having to decide which two of his three strikers starts here (given that playing just one up front is virtually forbidden, right?).
Given the start the Bulls have made to their league campaign, and the fact that Saturday’s visitors won’t be troubling the upper echelons of the NLN this season, this game is an important one. A win would give everyone some hope that a recovery is properly underway. A draw would reinforce thoughts that this season isn’t going to be ‘the one’, and a loss would suggest that supporters will be spending the season nervously looking at the results of the bottom four clubs at 5pm each Saturday from now until May, that is of course unless Hereford are in the bottom four themselves.
The commitment, togetherness and good football that were on display in the win against Alfreton would be more than enough here to ensure that the first of the above scenarios is the one we’ll be enjoying on Saturday evening. If that Alfreton game is considered in isolation there’ll be absolutely nothing to worry about this season and possibly even something to look forward to. I’d like to think it’s far more representative of what’s to come than some of the other games, notably Kings Lynn and Chorley. Frankly, much more of the latter two and it’ll be Harborough Town next season.
As ever, any assessment of how things have gone so far needs to come with the caveat that Madou Cisse and Gus Mafuta have yet to make their mark on the season, and both could be big players.
The hosts will presumably be desperate to put recent distractions behind them with a blistering performance here, which would be just what everyone needs after a difficult week.
Really need to win this.
COYW