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Following a promising opening draw at Kings Lynn last weekend, new-look Hereford FC take to the sacred Edgar Street turf on Saturday for the first time this season, with Darlington the visitors and a reasonably large attendance expected.
This game presents a fascinating set of potential scenarios so early in the season, probably because of the uncertainties of an entirely overhauled squad. A home win here, with the promise of a much more attacking display than we’re used to, partly courtesy of double the number of strikers we’re used to, would mean things start to look very promising indeed, with a very winnable looking home match with Rushall to come next Tuesday evening on what could be one of those lovely late-summer-big-crowd evenings at Edgar Street when there’s nowhere else in the world you’d rather be (apart from maybe Leominster’s OK Diner on Burger Wednesday). However, another draw would require next Tuesday’s match to be won to keep the pessimists on board, and a loss…well a loss isn’t really in the brief at all.
OK, so I suppose those ‘fascinating scenarios’ are basically win, lose or draw which are of course fairly traditional football match scenarios, but there seems to be an added significance to each here in terms of the possible effect on the next nine months of the Hereford FC-fixated compartment of our lives.
The good news is that on all available evidence a home win looks the most likely outcome. That point in Norfolk will surely prove at the end of the season to be one gained rather than two dropped, and as such represents a solid start. How novel to see a cross into the box resulting in a goal (I’d forgotten you were even allowed to do things like that rather than waiting politely for the opposition to all get back in defensive positions before laterally moving about a bit unthreateningly in front of them and then giving them the ball back) and a cracking centre forward’s goal for the second, securing the draw in a game that almost certainly wouldn’t have been a draw last season.
So, encouragement enough there to suggest that the hosts can go into this one on the front foot, but the good news keeps coming because the visitors lost their opener at home to Curzon Ashton last Saturday. The Nash are not the whipping-boy minnows of old by any means, but nevertheless that result would have been a bit of a kick in the teeth for the squadbuilder supremos, and suggests that their dreadful form towards the end of last season is being carried into this one.
The Bulls are of course missing a considerable smattering of first teamers for one reason or another, with Lassana Mendes, Aaron Skinner, Andy Williams and presumably Kyle Howkins missing out here. If Howkins does manage to recover sufficiently a la Jason Cowley his presence defensively will be a huge reassurance after a few little switch-offs at the back in the opening game.
Whether Stanley Anaebonam is considered to be best used this season as an impact substitute or whether his impact as an impact substitute against Kings Lynn was impactful enough to earn him a start here remains to be seen.
Up front, what a huge testament to the character of Jason Cowley that he forced himself into Paul Caddis’s starting XI more or less off the treatment table last week, and he of course was rewarded with the sort of opportunistic goal the club has been starved of since you-know-who ran out of divisions he was able to score 50 goals a season in.
The visitors played some lovely football in this fixture a couple of seasons back and didn’t feel the need to do any cheating, which was a huge breath of fresh air. Sadly that wasn’t the case last season when they were more familiarly akin to most other sides in the division - prepared to sell their grannies for a 1-0 win.
The Quakers’ summer squad builder figure of £162k was, not for the first time, hugely impressive, and has allowed manager Alun Armstrong to sign the likes of 23-year-old attacker Mitchell Curry on a one-year contract. He started his career at Middlesbrough eight years ago when Armstrong was on the coaching staff there, and after loan spells at Harrogate and Inverness, Curry moved to Sunderland in 2020. He has most recently been playing in the USA. Fellow striker Jacob Hazel got 19 goals last season and will take some containing.
Darlo were in the top three for much of last season before utterly running out of puff, which admittedly coincided with losing prolific goal machine Mark Beck to Solihull.
Armstrong and his assistant served a touchline ban for the Curzon match. I assume they’ll be back pitchside for this one to add a frisson of excitement to proceedings in the technical areas.
The Bulls have won just one of the eight matches between these clubs, but there’s just a possibility this could be the season when some of these awful National League North head-to-head records HFC are currently lumbered with are given a bit more balance.
It’s the hope that kills you, but I’m really looking forward to this.
COYW