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Blyth have to win to stay in the division, and hope that other results go their way. If the game is edging towards a draw and their goalie goes up for corners looking to nod in a winner, it could allow Hereford the opportunity to explore a few new ways to break at pace towards an empty net and then not score. ‘That’ miss at the death last Saturday perfectly and painfully encapsulated the Bulls’ season.
The squad looks about to be comprehensively rebuilt as new manager Paul Caddis seeks to make his mark, and with the best will in the world that squad may well be potentially as good as we’ve constantly been told it is, but it has lost 20 of 45 games. Any potential should have been realised over the course of the season, and there’s no amount of bad luck that can cause a ‘potentially top three squad’ in Luke Haines’ words to lose that many games.
Caddis has stated that he’s keen on building a squad that ‘embodies character, desire and a strong work ethic that mirrors the position of our fantastic supporters’. Hopefully it can mirror the position of supporters who’d like a bit more too. Character, desire and a strong work ethic alone sounds like Alfreton, which I wouldn’t be too keen to pay to watch. Ideally what’s needed is character, desire, a strong work ethic, a really lazy centre forward who does nothing all game apart from tap-ins and ends up with 30 of them at the end of the season, and the sort of total football that would make 1970s Ajax look like, well, Alfreton. There are five players already who can provide the foundations for that next season if the club can afford to keep all five (one of whom is already contracted), and it’s then up to the new manager to find another ten, half of whom, by all means, can be made out of granite and be barely able to play football. The whole lot could then be topped off with a smattering of youngsters.
Over to you Paul. If you get it right 3000 people will turn up to see the fruits of your labours each home game. Even if you get it badly wrong 1500 mugs will still turn up…but they won’t be happy about having to do so.
I’d be a bit sad to see Blyth go, and not only because it’s uniquely a guaranteed three points at this level for Hereford. Blyth’s defending in this fixture last season, a game won 4-1 by the visitors, was ‘charitable’ to put it politely, but generally they try to play the right way and don’t get sucked into the dark arts employed by others, mentioning no names other than Alfreton, Leamington and Southport. And Kettering. And Banbury. And Darlington. It’ll be a shame for the NLN if we lose one of the good guys.
However, they’re in very, very deep trouble partly because they’ve only won four of 22 home games this season. That said, there have been teams right throughout the season who have been serial losers, then beaten Hereford, then gone back to losing again, so that poor record shouldn’t give rise to unbridled optimism among Bulls fans. The fact that the Bulls have won seven out of seven against Spartans since promotion to the NLN does bode well though.
Spartans lost last time out in the league, 1-0 at Alfreton, but prior to that they’d been making a decent fist of trying to stay up, going five games unbeaten. They did have a break from the rigours of the NLN on Tuesday night when going down 2-0 to our old friends Morpeth in the Northumberland Senior Cup final at St James Park. As mentioned above, if they lose again here they’re down, and even if they do win they’re still down if Kettering win or Farsley avoid defeat.
As for Hereford, it was a little disingenuous of Yan Klukowski to suggest last week that potentially finishing with more points than the club has ever finished with before will be a big tick in the box. As Yan will know, there have been four more games this season. However, the Bulls go into this one three games unbeaten, and will be keen to finish on a high, maybe overhauling Peterborough Sports in the table in the process, and finishing 14th and top of the clubs who haven’t been good enough to feature in the overcrowded rush for the lower play-off places.
Finally, a heartfelt thanks to all readers of these match previews over what’s been a bit of a challenging season. I’ll be back in August if Bulls News lets me. After all, I haven’t upset anyone this season other than a few overly-earnest Kidderminster fans. Talking of which, Tom Owen-Evans does now seem to have fallen out with Harriers and is imminently out of contract. Just saying.
Happy summer everyone, see you in August.
COYW