Alf and safety

After a couple of big derby games, Hereford FC return to something a bit more recognisable as step 2 football with a trip to Alfreton on Saturday, weather permitting. It’s set to be -3 degrees on Friday night up there, and indeed down here, so it may be a bit touch and go.

Both sides are in the relegation places, so this is very much a battle for three crucial points towards safety come the end of the season.

This will be the second time in four days that Alfreton have faced a rival in the bottom three, having hosted bottom club Leamington on Tuesday. That one ended 2-1 to the Derbyshire side, suggesting strongly that one of the relegation places already has Leamington’s name on it. It’s now up to Hereford to ensure that they’re a long way north of the remaining three places asap.

Back in August the Bulls comfortably beat Alfreton 2-0, a result that gave some hope in suggesting that the abject defeats prior to that were as a result of the club being ill-prepared for the start of the season. Hereford are now second bottom after half a season, and those depressingly meek capitulations to Kings Lynn and Chorley in August still look more representative of where the club is at than where it needs to be right now, and where it should have been at the start of the season, but palpably wasn’t, for reasons we’ll never fully know.

Given where the club finds itself in the table, Paul Caddis can’t approach this as a ‘can’t lose’ game in setting up with five defenders and hopeful long diags as an attacking philosophy. He’ll have faith in his players to win this on the front foot with high-paced on-the-floor attacking football. It’s a must win, and if it's anything other than won the Southern League creeps ever closer as a probability. For a club with 2500 gates that’s preposterous.

The Reds aren’t actually that bad at home, but have somehow contrived to only score ten goals in eleven home games in winning four and drawing three of those games. If you’re looking for patterns/clutching at straws, Alfreton have been losing alternate games over the course of their last nine matches, and guess what? This is one they’re due to lose.

Like Hereford, they can’t afford a significant goalscorer, although Mark Beck, on loan from Scunthorpe and 6’ 4” tall, could give the Hereford defence an issue purely by being 6’ 4” tall. He scored on Tuesday and I think this is his last game before returning to his parent club, so he’ll be looking to go out on a high note with another goal. Jed Abbey, who is similarly tall, has been influential against Hereford in the past when playing for South Shields. This Alfreton side is in no way South Shields though, and he’s had a quiet season to date.

Given that a clean sheet for the Bulls is unlikely, the visitors need to outscore the hosts, so someone needs to step up and get the goals that won’t be coming from Sam Osborne (gone back to Alfreton) or Omari Sterling-James (gone to Hednesford). Who’s to say those goals won’t again come from defenders as on Tuesday night? Goalscoring contributions from those defenders direct from set pieces, or indirectly following a set piece, have been conspicuous by their absence this season (although not so much for the opposition). If Tuesday marked a turning point in that respect it could be a sign that the second half of the season will be as good as the first has been bad.

Talking of Sam Osborne, what a bizarre situation he finds himself in here, playing for a club he wants to leave against one he wants to continue playing for. Surely that’s a recipe for a hat-trick of own goals? The desire for him to stay seems to have been unanimous in terms of supporters, management, board, team-mates and the player himself, and an 18-month contract would have been a perfect outcome. Alas, it was not to be, but hopefully he’ll be near the top of the HFC shopping list come the end of the season if nothing can be done to get him back sooner than that.

While it’s true that, given the frailty of the Hereford back line, a clean sheet is wishful thinking, the form of Theo Richardson does make it a possibility. The Bulls goalie really is showing his class at the moment.

With a new year upon us, loanees I-Lani Edwards, Jaiden White and Callum McFarlane may now be back at their parent clubs.

To balance the effect of that potential mini-exodus, one intriguing aspect of this game is that one or two of the reportedly imminent new arrivals may make an appearance here, and Preston Bitemo could be back from his loan spell at Kettering. Madou Cisse continues to be something of a mystery in terms of his fitness/availability/existence.

That 94^th-minute midweek equaliser at Merthyr feels like such a boost going into this match and the new year, particularly as it came from Kyle Howkins in atoning for his first-half ‘blip’, and if there’s one player who will be readily forgiven for a defensive slip-up it’s Big Kyle, given the number of goals he’s saved this season with last-ditch tackles. Hopefully he’ll now go on a run of goalscoring to complement those last-ditch tackles at the other end.

However, as boosting as that equaliser was, Alfreton’s win against Leamington meant that Hereford dropped to second bottom in the table. There’s much, much work to do.

The last time Hereford were away at a fellow struggler they eased to a 2-0 win at Peterborough. Something similar here would do very nicely against an Alfreton side that’s a shadow of the teams ex-manager Billy Heath used to put out season after season in recent years. This game will see a return to winning ways – it has to really doesn’t it?

COYW