Mark Jones with this preview ahead of the game at Edgar Street this afternoon:
Get the bunting out - it's party time!
There are dead rubbers and not-so-dead rubbers, and this afternoon's match against Kettering Town at 3pm looks to have plenty of bounce in it. Top vs third, champions vs potential runners up, best team in the league vs (recently) the most free scoring, and the home areas of the ground packed to the rafters. It may be largely academic in terms of the actual result, at least for the hosts, but the ingredients are all there to ensure that supporters will be savouring this one, before the season finally dribbles to a close with a couple of genuine dead rubbers next week.
Of course, despite not needing to win, the Bulls squad is not one to light the cigars and get the beach towels out. We can be confident that they'll be as hungry to beat the Poppies, a club that looked, before a ball was kicked this season, to be one of our main challengers, as they were to beat Biggleswade on Tuesday.
With the visitors really needing something from the game to push on for a home match in their play-off semi-final, it looks likely that we'll see that rare beast at Edgar Street over the last three seasons, opposition that wants to get forward and be positive. It'll be fascinating to see whether the Bulls are able to exploit the spaces they never usually see in attacking areas, with those spaces usually swamped by two banks of four defensively-minded players. The suspicion surely has to be that there are goals in the match, and that it'll be much more end-to-end than usual, which can only add to the excitement.
The Bulls start without Radio Hereford FC's player of the season Ryan Green for the final 90 minutes of his three-match ban, but otherwise they're at full strength. With some very good players currently not even making the bench at the moment, boss Pete Beadle has another selection headache on his hands, if indeed you can have a headache on your hands, which of course you can't because it would be a handache, and that's not even a thing. No doubt he would describe it as a nice problem to have, and there will of course be players desperate to get on and prove that they're worth retaining next season. It'll be interesting to see if he makes a few changes to the starting XI to give others a go, or considers the opposition too talented to risk any squad rotation.
Kettering are, of course, a club well known to many Bulls fans, who will have good and bad memories of trips to Rockingham Road in the past. Very much a 'proper' non-league outfit, to use that somewhat arbitrary yet commonly used term, the Poppies are, quite frankly, absolutely flying at the moment, with Thursday's 2-0 win against Weymouth probably even more impressive than their previous 7-0 mauling of Gosport on the Hampshire strugglers' own ground.
When the teams met in Northamptonshire just before Christmas, Hereford eased past a team who had to that point been unbeaten at home, with goals from Eliot Richards, the Chop and the Beast, and with perspective that result now looks very impressive.
In many, many areas of my life I look to Russ Abbott for inspiration, and parties are no exception. Win, lose or draw, this end-of-season party should have a happy atmosphere, but a 4-3 win with a last-gasp goal in front of the Meadow End to win it would put the icing on the cake, before the presentation of the league trophy.
And yet...and yet...despite all of the above, the last bit of this preview has to be reserved for a certain ex-Leicester City apprentice who has become very, very dear to all of us. Rob Purdie - we salute you. We'll miss your presence all over the pitch, your passion for the club, but most importantly your ability to acrobatically fly straight past a goal celebration when it matters.
Thank you Rob.