When
Bulls’s fans made their way to Biggleswade on Tuesday, for the game
which ultimately gained our third consecutive promotion and
Championship, many of us already knew about the Waders’ recent problems
on the goal-keeping front. With their regular goalies injured, and their
only other registered keeper being “in dispute” with them, the Southern
League had refused them leave for an emergency loan, meaning three
games were played with an outfield player, Craig Daniel, between the
sticks.
However,
Hereford’s officials had been informed that the Southern League had
finally relented, and allowed the Waders to register their youth team’s
stopper, seventeen-year-old Patrick Sinfield, on League forms in time to
face the Bulls.
Very
few Hereford fans at the game would have been aware of this turn of
events, and sadly for Bull News, our match-reporter for the evening,
Eric, was not one of them. Consequently, parts of Eric’s report
questioned Hereford’s inability to test someone from range who we
believed didn’t want to play the position, whilst young Patrick’s
obvious athleticism and abilities were rather curtly dismissed as being
“not bad for an outfield player!”
Hindsight
is a wonderful thing, and so it proved Peter Beadle’s, and the team’s,
tactics of denying the opposition possession, whilst coping with a
deteriorating pitch, succeeded once more, as taking long-distance
pot-shots at an already capable young keeper would only have served to
make both him and his team more confident.
Patrick
Sinfield is clearly naturally suited as a keeper, who, with a fair roll
of the dice, may well make a name for himself higher up in the future.
And, after his assured performance in what was his semi-professional
League debut on Tuesday night, we would wish him well. Even though he
really should have taken Purdie’s handshake in the spirit of the game!