No Flamingo

Pending an imminent pitch inspection, it’s back to league action for Hereford FC this weekend as they travel up to Bridlington to face Scarborough, following a much-needed break from the National League North last Saturday, which saw smooth progress made into the next round of the FA Trophy.

This will be the Seadogs fourth season in the NLN, although it’s a challenging one for them following a sky-high quote for a plastic pitch replacement at the Flamingo Land Stadium, which has left them playing home games this season twenty miles down the coast.

Echoes here of Farsley’s implosion last season, so fingers crossed that they can get it sorted as quickly as possible, given that Celtic ended up getting dumped in step 5 as a result of their own plastic pitch issues.

I suggested pre-season that the pitch situation might make Scarborough outside bets for relegation, but they started superbly and were in the top three for a while. Not unusually my Mystic Meg powers weren’t much cop, although in my defence I did also suggest that Radcliffe could be NLN promotion dark horses, which they are being, and they’ll be tough opponents in the next round of the Trophy.

Scarborough have now slipped a bit but still occupy a play-off position. That slippage is largely due to a run of four straight losses recently against Telford, Marine, South Shields and Worksop. They stopped that particular rot with a win at Curzon Ashton, and it’s that sort of result that’s probably a fairer reflection of how challenging they’ll be as opponents, ie difficult for a Hereford side short on confidence. This notion is backed up by the fact that they beat Fylde and a flying Merthyr earlier in the season.

Given that they’re merely tenants at Bridlington’s Mounting Systems Stadium (how boring is that name compared to the Flamingo Land Stadium?!), their record there is superb. They’ve won six of seven games.

They’re typically a good-to-watch passing team. Luca Colville, Alex Purver and Harry Green have all shown themselves to be smart and creative midfielders against Hereford before. Dom Tear always weighs in with goals, but the big success story for them this season has been ex-Middlesbrough youngster Stephen Walker, who joined in February from Whitby. He has nine goals in 14 league games.

Last weekend though the Seadogs were dumped out of the Trophy, losing 1-0 at Leek.

Hereford yet again conceded earlyish against Sudbury last weekend, but stormed back for a comfortable win. It may be of lower importance as a competition, but could that Trophy win be a springboard to bounce on to better things in the league? It’s an inconvenient truth that as we approach late November Hereford have failed to beat any of the sides in the top half of the division, other than Buxton who are 11th, so far this season. If they can buck that trend here something special could finally start to happen.

Matt Preston will be back for this one having sat out the Trophy game serving a one-match ban.

Sam Osborne, with three goals last Saturday, continues to be one of the season’s redeeming features, and could well go on to be the side’s top scorer this season. It would be nice to think that some sort of deal can be struck with Alfreton to make his move south a more concrete one, for the rest of this season and ideally the next.

Big performances from recent hat-trick heroes Osborne and Omari Sterling James will be key here to giving the hosts something to worry about.

Harley Hamilton is back in contention here having been cup-tied last weekend, and has shown enough already so far since his arrival from Alvechurch to suggest that he could contribute to a turnaround in the Bulls’ fortunes.

The biggest squad news of the week though was Jaiden White’s return on loan from Sutton. The player seemed to improve markedly during his last spell at Edgar Street, and also connected really well with younger supporters. He also seemed genuinely sorry to go, although no-one could blame him for stepping up a level. Montel Gibson’s return earlier in the season was of course the dampest of squibs, but Jaiden could make a real difference between now and January, when the loan deal expires. After all, you can’t always rely on your midfielders getting hat-tricks each week.

Well done also to Paul Caddis for getting the deal done, a deal no doubt made easier by the part the manager played in improving the player and forming a good working relationship with him last season.

It would have been depressingly difficult to make a case for Hereford getting anything out of this prior to the FA Trophy game, but five goals away from home last week should have given the squad a confidence boost regardless of the quality of the opposition, and is something to build on as they look to climb away from the relegation places.

A clean sheet and solidly organised defensive display would be a nice early Christmas present too.

COYW