Mark Jones previews tomorrow's FA Cup Tie between Gosport and Hereford. Please note this preview was written before today's signings were announced.
Well, it’s been some considerable time now since Uncle Covid brought his unwelcome needle and thread to the rich tapestry we call life (and, sadly, death), but finally the football is back, albeit not quite as we’ve known it, to give us something wonderfully trivial to lighten the load.
With everything all topsy turvy at the moment, Hereford FC kick off the season in suitably uncustomary fashion, in October, with an FA Cup tie, but this match will at least have some familiarity to it: a pitch, goals, a ball and 22 players. Everything that’s been missing from our lives for months, unless you’ve developed a Subbuteo habit during lockdown. Add in all the hackneyed old Cup magic, romance and memories of dribbly Ricky Villa and some joiner from West Yorkshire’s lucky 35-yard swing of the boot against Newcastle, and you’ve got the recipe for pazazz and razzmatazz, but hopefully no zzz.
The nearly-new Gowling-Burr management team seem to have done an excellent job over the summer, battling what must have been at times a hugely frustrating and near-impossible set of circumstances. That said, the pre-season friendlies hinted at, OK shouted at, a distinct lack of potency up top, with Lennell John-Lewis struggling with his fitness, and Demetri Brown yet to prove that he can show at National League North level the promise he showed lower down the pyramid for Worcester City. It’s an issue that’s plagued the club since it was promoted to so-called elite level, and will need to be addressed sharpish, not least because league matches will be coming thick and fast to enable the season to be wrapped up by May. I’m no mathematician, but if the Bulls continue current form by scoring nil over the course of the 11 league matches between now and the end of November I can’t see too many points being accumulated.
On a brighter note the squad, as thinly populated as it currently is, looks considerably stronger defensively, both physically and in terms of ability and experience, than has been the case in recent seasons. The likes of Jamie Grimes and Dan Jones ooze pedigree like a Crufts winner, at least in terms of doing a job in National League North.
Saturday’s opponents are Gosport Borough, one step below Hereford in the Southern League Premier South. In simpler times, the Bulls made short work of Borough when spending just one season with them in 2017/18. The Bulls won those two fixtures 5-1 and 4-0 as they charged to their third consecutive league title. It was admittedly a season Gosport would like to forget, finishing second bottom on just 19 points from 46 games points.
However, things should be tougher this time around, with Saturday’s hosts already three games into their season and flying high in second position, having scored six goals and conceded precisely none so far.
Last season’s Bulls Cup campaign ended prematurely and in high farce. This is what I wrote about it at the time:
“The penalty shoot-out went really badly. Pollock's was at least saved. Owen-Evans and Symo were aiming somewhere north of Lyde, and possibly hit that target. Brad Ash scored but it was all too late. The best bit of the whole sorry evening was when a Tamworth player, using different maths to everyone else, suddenly, in the middle of the as-yet unresolved shoot-out, broke free from his more numerate team-mates and legged it towards his adoring fans thinking that it was all over. How he must have wished the Edgar Street turf could have swallowed him whole.”
Let’s hope things go better tomorrow on the south coast.
Despite all the uncertainty, the conflicting messages and the behind-closed-doorsness, it’s good to be back. There’s some down-the-back-of-the-sofa cash on offer for winning this, which will very slightly bolster the government bail-out offering, but a good performance here is arguably more important for the morale boost it would give before the club starts its league campaign at Haig Avenue, Southport on Tuesday evening.
COYW