Mind the gap

Just ten days after Hereford travelled to Macclesfield for a game they didn’t have much luck in, Macc come down to Edgar Street on Tuesday for the reverse fixture.

The Bulls went into that last game between these sides off the back of two straight defeats. That run has now been extended to five straight defeats, which has put the Bulls in a very difficult position with the gap between them and safety widening, effectively making this a must-win game, with Aaron Downes admitting as much on Saturday after defeat to Buxton.

Ahead of that first game at Macclesfield I suggested that:

“An impartial observer would still see Hereford as being in the strongest position of any club in the bottom six, and to fail to finish above four of their fellow strugglers given the position those three wins on the bounce recently left them in would take a complete tailing-off in form.”

Well, that ‘complete tailing-off in form’ has happened, and Hereford are no longer ‘in the strongest position of any club in the bottom six’.

Hereford arguably had the better of things up at Moss Rose until Harrison Sohna was controversially sent off. Macc captain Paul Dawson acted ‘professionally’ in making a point of shouting at the prone Sohna an inch from his face to signal his feelings about Sohna’s actions, which may well have turned a yellow into a red. Such interventions aren’t particularly surprising of course, but what was less palatable was another of their players celebrating once the ref had brandished the red card.

Regardless of the unsavoury nature of a player celebrating the early exit of another (Sohna sits out the second of three matches here as a result), what it did suggest was that the Silkmen knew at that point that they’d been up against it when it was 11v11, and Hereford will know there’s no gulf in quality between the sides. What there might be, however, is an energy deficit given the recent back-to-back fixtures the squad has ploughed through; there were hints at tiredness against Buxton on Saturday. Macclesfield had no game at the weekend so they should be fresh.

The newly-promoted Silkmen emulated Hereford in shooting up the lower leagues (after previous incarnation Macclesfield Town went pop in 2020), and cantered into the National League North in winning the Northern Premier last season, a good few weeks before the end of the season.

Robbie Savage was at the helm for that promotion, before leaving for Nailsworth’s Forest Green Rovers, with Laurent Mendy, Tre Pemberton, and Neil Kengni going with him to the Stroud Valleys. Those losses could have been felt deeply. That hasn’t really been the case though, as like Merthyr they’ve adapted quickly and well to the NLN. They’re fourth in the league, have won five of their last seven, and games in hand mean that they’re looking rock solid for a play-off place.

Macc have done very well to have sustained a play-off push having lost two key goalscorers. Centre forward Danny Elliott scored 40 in 50 last season at a level lower, and got a goal every other game for Boston at this level a few seasons ago. He’d scored 11 in 20 before getting injured in January, and is out for the rest of the season. They also lost D’Mani Mellor, who’d been matching Danny Elliott in terms of goals scored, as he’s also gone to Forest Green.

Midfielders Justin Johnson and Isaac Buckley-Ricketts are familiar players from their time with Chorley and Curzon Ashton respectively, with Johnson in particular being Chorley’s star man a couple of seasons ago.

I said it before the Buxton game, but one thing the Bulls could really profit from is a change in fortune. A gifted goal of the sort that often gets conceded but seemingly never gets scored could spark a revival.

As was the case against Buxton, the first task here though will be to get through the first few passages of play without conceding.

With nine games left there’s time for more twists and turns yet. There’s no game for Bedford on Tuesday so a Bulls win would see them move to within three points of that club (they’re rapidly becoming the sole realistic club Hereford can catch and therefore consign to relegation). With three games in hand, all of a sudden it would look back on, ahead of Good Friday’s derby game at Aggborough. It’s just that the actual winning-a-game aspect of that equation seems so far off at the moment. Another loss here will signal that meek surrender to relegation is by far the most likely outcome when those nine games have been played.

Over the course of those ten days between the Macc games everything has become very dicey. Oh how I’d love to drive home after this match with some sense of hope following a win, any sort of a win. Will the dice roll at last in the hosts’ favour here? They kind of have to.

COYW