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| Jon Hale |
Hereford chairman Jon Hale has spoken about his hopes for the future of the club. Hale was the first chairman when the club was reformed in 2015 and after a break of several years he has taken up the post for a second time.
In particular Hale wants people to enjoy 'every aspect of the club' and he wants to see Edgar Street 'rocking again'.
"I'm really pleased to be back and really excited to get back involved and hopefully push the club forward again," said Hale.
He said that he hadn't been away as he had watched matches with his son on the Meadow End.
"I've always enjoyed being in the Meadow End and I might still watch the odd game from there, why not?"
Hale spoke about manager Josh Gowling.
"He's done a fantastic job to keep everything on a level and then push it forward. I don't think anybody expected us to get through to the final of the FA Trophy.
"It was a fantastic end to a really difficult period.
"Now, hopefully, we can look forward to everyone getting back in here now pre-season onwards and we can push on and he can build on what he's done and I know he's very keen to do that."
What does Hale want to do?
"The biggest thing for me is engaging with everybody and making sure that people whether they come to games, whether they follow us on social media, whether they are a thousand miles away, I want everybody to understand they are a part of this football club.
"We want to build this big family atmosphere at the club again and make people want to be involved in whatever way they can. The volunteers who do such a superb job, sponsors, supporters, players even, we want everybody to feel a part of the club and if we can do that we've got a real genuine opportunity to move the club on and hopefully get back to the football league one day."
Lots of new faces since you were last in charge?
"Well there are a few old faces (reference to Jamie Griffiths who was interviewing Hale) and it was very nice to meet one or two people I already knew from before.
"Obviously when you are on the terraces as I have been you don't always see what's going on behing the scenes and you don't meet those people so there are going to be plenty of people I haven't met before.
"The time away I think it's made me realise perhaps how lucky we were to come back as we did and have that fantastic start and the feeling around the club back then was one of complete solidarity and the volunteers who came in to get this ground up and running.
"It's probably given me sometime to think about how lucky we were that all those people came forward and I reach out to all those people again, volunteers and supporters, to see if we can try and build this up again and move it on again to the next stage.
"We've had this awful period with the pandemic where nobody has been able to come into Edgar Street and I just get a genuine feeling that people are bursting to get back here and enjoy football again.
"You look at the ground today, a beautiful sunny day, and you can just imagine, hopefully, three or four thousand people in here cheering a very competitve football team that Josh is building.
"It has a similar sort of feel to it so why shouldn't we try and aim for that and look back to some of those times we had back in 2015 and onwards.
"Let's get it going again and let's get this place rocking. That's what this football club should be about people enjoying every aspect of Hereford FC.
"I'm determined that people should do that."
Full video interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBq4q2Kqp4g