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If a week’s a long time in politics, five days is even longer in football.
Before this game was supposed to be played on Good Friday, everything was still looking OK in terms of Hereford FC and play-off qualification. The game was then flooded off, and the following game wasn’t won.
Suddenly, to all intents and purposes, the season is now probably over, and it was probably over long before Kyle Howkins slotted home for Buxton. With Easter Monday’s visitors having nothing to play for and the hosts having everything to play for, it should have been a one-sided onslaught long before, at 2-0 down, it became a one-sided onslaught. The fact that it wasn’t, coupled with the bulk of the club’s form over the last month or so, point to the fact that it’s a season too soon to have the consistency required to be up towards the top of the table. One win in the last five games isn’t the sort of form that gets you anywhere, other than treading water at best.
The only club in the top ten with comparable form to Hereford is Chester, who I astutely tipped a few short weeks ago as being nailed on for the play-offs. How shrewd.
If Alex Babos was fully fit and/or bug-free on Monday it would be surprising – the Bulls playmaker has ‘shown up’ consistently this season, but he looked tired against Buxton.
Jid Okeke was, like Babos, a little muted on Monday. It’s unlikely that the bogginess of the Banbury pitch will bring out the best in him, but hopefully he’ll be more like the player he was against Farsley here.
Bishops Stortford beat Banbury 3-1 on Monday, and that tells you all you need to know about where the Oxfordshire club is at. The Puritans appear to be in complete disarray, with players leaving as fast as local water levels have been rising, and 19-year-olds being brought in to plug the holes in the squad left by those departees. Plugging the holes in the club’s flood defences would appear to be beyond the skillset of mere teenagers.
It seems that they’d like to just get their weather-induced fixture pile-up out of the way, get relegated, and start again.
They’ve lost their last ten games, with their last win coming two months ago. Astonishingly, they’ve managed to score just 13 goals at home this season in 19 games. For context, divisional whipping boys Bishops Stortford have managed 21.
Banbury come into this one off the back of a 4-1 thrashing at Curzon Ashton, then a 3-0 loss at home to South Shields, followed, most damningly of all, by that loss in Hertfordshire. That run sees them ten points short of safety, but it may as well be 100 points given how many wheels seem to be falling off at the club with every passing day, and the two games they have in hand may as well be 200. They’re down.
Lawson D’ath was one of the players to leave the club recently, before resurfacing last week somewhere much better. His Bulls debut on Monday wasn’t spectacular, but neither was Tom Pugh’s in a similar role, an unspectacular role appreciated by people who know lots about football, and not people like me who just think goals are really good.
The newcomer has a solid CV and it’ll be interesting to see how he grows into that role over the last few games of the season.
There will be no D’ath for this one, or Tope Obadeyi, as they’re both parent-clubbed, and Yusifu Ceesay may be a doubtful starter as he hasn’t quite recovered from his poorly knee.
Lassana Mendes is still out injured, which does leave things a bit patchy in midfield with D’ath and Obadeyi absent, especially as Jordan Lyden isn’t 100% fit either. It seems to be a given therefore that Aurio Teixeira will regain his starting place, and he’s shown before that he reacts very well when back in the side having been given an enforced ‘rest’. Hopefully Dom McHale will be back too.
This will inevitably be won, as it’ll be like playing Hunderton u14s (no disrespect to them if they’re having a good season), which would have been good and useful five days ago, but the days of must-wins passed with that 2-2 draw with Buxton. It’s now time for Hail Marys, or realistically time to plan for fielding a damned good side next season, with the number one priority hopefully being to eradicate the concession of pub-team goals.
The virtual gimme three points here will consolidate the Bulls’ top ten credentials, and the 3000 gate on Monday reflects the groundswell of goodwill and belief there is for Paul Caddis and his quest to build next season on the progress made since he arrived at the club.
In a world in which part-time Hereford FC, with gates of 3000, are financial underdogs to soon-to-be-full-time-professional Buxton, with gates of 500, Planet Football continues to grow into something beyond explicable.
It would be beyond explicable if the Bulls’ season was still alive in another five days time, but who knows with football?
Kyle Howkins hat-trick at the right end here.
COYW