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New striker Colin Oppong looked to be just what the side needs in the first half of what turned out to be yet another hugely frustrating game on Saturday. It was unusual to see opposition defenders panicking at Edgar Street, which probably tells its own tale, but they were certainly discombobulated by the young Salford loanee. He twisted the blood of most if not all of the Banbury backline, before they resorted to illegally twisting him (with the permission of the referee) and before he ran out of puff and any sort of service in the second half. With pace, strength and skill (and service), he could well open his account for the Bulls in Durham.
Moors centre backs James Curtis and Joe Tait, who both make tectonic plates look agile, will have their hands full (almost certainly literally with big fistfuls of Colin O’s shirt, and even of bits of Colin himself). With a bit of luck the ref won’t be a hopeless wombat unwilling to offer any protection, but that’s unlikely, frankly. He will be a wombat. NLN refs may as well all actually run around in mascot-like wombat costumes for the whole game.
Moors star striker Glen Taylor is unusually having a relatively quiet season so far, with 11 league goals to his name, whereas usually he’d expect to be approaching double that by now. He’ll nevertheless pounce effortlessly and lethally on anything approaching a repeat performance of the Hereford defending in the second half on Saturday. Gallivanting right-back John Lufudu will prove to be a lively handful for returning Jared Hodgkiss to cope with if he starts at left back in place of injured Jack Evans, or for Ryan Lloyd if he fills in there with Jethro Hanson returning to his position at diamond base camp.
Moors sit a point and a place below Hereford with a game in hand over the Bulls. Usually very strong at home, they’ve only won five of their 12 games at the Brewery Field so far this season. ‘It’s a tough pace to go’ will be wheeled out pre-match at some point presumably, but Buxton won there and Telford drew, so in terms of tough places to go it’s lost its lustre a bit this season. Undoubtedly though, the midweek factor does add to the toughness of the assignment, and the northeasterners have improved since Buxton and Telford visited.
These sides shared the spoils on the opening day of the season with an entertaining if defensively shambolic 3-3 draw on a beautiful Edgar Street summer’s day. Weather conditions will be very different this time, and hopefully so will the defending from one of the teams, although the second half on Saturday suggested that very few lessons have been learnt in the interim.
Like Hereford, Moors have picked up a bit recently, but also like Hereford they lost on Saturday. In their case though it was away at high-flying Darlington in a big derby game, as opposed to at home to stuttering Banbury. Prior to that they’d won four of their last five games following a raft of new signings made in recent weeks, with club owner Brad Groves able to wield the chequebook in a way the Hereford board can seemingly only dream of, although wielding a chequebook these days would make you look a bit of an antiquated throwback weirdo, like twirling a gramophone.
The Brewery Field playing surface is usually a good one so there will be no excuses on that front, but the long midweek journey certainly won’t do anything for the liveliness of the Hereford side early in the game. Perhaps this time the now traditional 45 minutes of quality will come in the second half when any journey-induced lethargy has been run off.
Of the likely starters, Kane Thompson-Sommers, Ryan Lloyd and Aaron Amadi Holloway are the players currently looking most likely to contribute most significantly to a smash-and-grab here, and it’s good to see Jared Hodgkiss back. It was the opposite of good, ie bad, to see the player he replaced on Saturday, Jack Evans, limp off injured. He’s proved to be an absolute keeper (ie not one of the many goalkeepers, more a player to keep hold of) as the season’s progressed, and would be among the first I’d offer terms to for next season if I was in the position to. Fondly tapping the badge when he could barely walk coming off on Saturday was very good PR too.
Jack Holmes will score a very good goal very soon, and, you never know, it could be here. It’ll only cost you a day off work and a million quid in petrol to take a chance on seeing it happen live.
Luke Haines is theoretically available for this one following suspension, but may not start given that goal machines Aaron Amadi-Holloway and Orrin Pendley currently ‘have the shirts’.
If he is a sub, it’s to be hoped that Spennymoor use the traditional bench approach at the Brewery Field rather than beanbags for the non-starting XI players to sit on, given the difficulty he had getting out of one recently. Having said that, Beanbag-gate sounded quite nasty, so he may well now be out injured anyway.
COYW