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Two things have stood out for me recently that starkly illustrate where the club is at currently. Firstly the picture of the 1-3 scoreline on the scoreboard at Fylde, which is the sort of picture the media usually reserves for huge upsets. It’s AFC Fylde. If there’s a picture published of the Edgar Street info screen at the end of this one showing Hereford 1-1 Kettering as the Bulls hold the mighty Poppies to a draw at home I for one may finally realise that this is a whole new football club with much more modest potential than the last lot who played at Edgar Street.
Secondly, the sense of inevitability and deflated resignation felt at losing at home to Chester. It’s illustrative of the mountain there is to climb in the summer. A new chairman, manager and largely overhauled playing squad could offer the wholesale transformation that reverses the sense that it’s all gone a bit stale. Continuity is of course to be applauded, but only if it’s a continuation of something successful.
A home game against Kettering less than five years ago, Rob Purdie’s last for the club, was a privilege to attend, just a glorious occasion in the sun, 4,500 crowd, all reflecting a club that was going places. Unless something very odd happens, this won’t be that, but a home performance needs to be found to arrest the feeling that it just isn’t much fun at the moment. It feels more like an obligation to go, and fewer people each home game are prepared to feel obliged.
Aaron Amadi-Holloway’s performance with a Terry Butcher head bandage on Tuesday was admirable, and the passion he showed in berating the officials for getting something clearly very wrong about one of the Chester goals (you can tell by that imprecision that I’ve subconsciously been trying to wipe my memory of the game since Tuesday) was brilliant to see. I would offer him the chairmanship, the manager’s job, the assistant manager’s job and a juicy playing contract if it meant he was around next season (as long as he could manage himself in such a way as to remain fit for 40+ games).
On Tuesday Kettering beat Curzon Ashton 1-0 at home in a game the Poppies dominated for the first 70 minutes, which is a bit of a worry as the Nash outplayed Hereford for about 70 minutes recently at Edgar Street. Having said that, results between virtually all clubs in the NLN other than those involving the handful who are good and the handful who are awful is a lottery, with everyone taking it in turns to win, lose or draw. If every club had no chairman, manager or tactics the table wouldn’t look dissimilar to how it looks now. In fact, you could get a computer to randomly spew out all the results for the season at an NLN event in August at a Travelodge on the outskirts of somewhere ghastly like whatever the northern equivalent of Bracknell is, thus avoiding the need to go and watch defeats on freezing cold Tuesday nights week after week. Veterans of those Tuesday nights this season could be forgiven for finding that concept quite appealing in removing the having-to-actually-go-to-the-games aspect of supporting.
The Poppies, featuring ex-Bull George Forsyth who I always thought had a certain something about him, are making a good fist of scrambling to safety, having lost just two of their last ten games. As a result they sit just four points behind Hereford with a game in hand, and are a healthy seven points clear of the relegation zone. One glaringly obvious positive for the Bulls though is that the visitors are terrible away, having won just two of 17 games on their travels this season. I got into trouble with them when previewing the match between these clubs earlier in the season (a 2-0 Bulls loss in Northamptonshire) by suggesting that the state of their pitch gives them more of a home advantage than is normal, but despite there being some grass on it for that match they’re still conspicuously reliant on home points. Anyway, that travel sickness does at least bode well if the Bulls can find a bit of energy and goal threat from somewhere. In addition, the hosts have won three out of the four games these two have played since Hereford FC were formed.
So some causes for optimism there, but, if the recent pattern is followed, this will presumably be hard-going and then Chorley away will be miraculously won comfortably with a classy performance that came from absolutely nowhere. However, as established above there’s no such thing as form in the NLN, so…5-0 Bulls.
COYW