Replacement Therapy at Edgar Street

An overview of last night from Simon and Glynis Wright:

Not going to The Valley ourselves this evening, but still wanting some sort of replacement therapy, we travelled to Edgar Street instead, for their Conference encounter with Cambridge United, who tumbled somewhat ignominiously into the unspeakable maw of non-league football come the end of last season. Since then, they've flirted somewhat dangerously with dissolution, the sum currently owed being in the order of 250K. Not a lot for such a club, you might think, but the moment this first started, they really felt the financial pinch, ownership of their ground being the first casualty. All their half-decent players have long-since flown the coop, and the only prospect left now is of a mid-table Conference finish, which won't do anyone any good. There is now talk of ground-sharing with the other Cambridge football club. That rankled so much with their support, there's yet another pressure group doing the rounds, hence the presence of a huge banner in the away end tonight bearing the simple legend: "SELL IT BACK".

It soon became clear that the visitors were intending to play it in similarly-turgid pattern to their unlamented former leader, John Beck, the only League manager to progress by boring the rest of the Football League half to death, back in the late eighties/early nineties. A pretty hard nut to crack as a result, and try as they might, one The Bulls couldn't, but doing so was vital to their interests, as there were other games on that night affecting the play-off picture; a win could see them go a glorious second. Mind you, they could have improved their prospects of doing so immeasurably by ditching the idea of playing with but a single target-man up front, a la Kevin Campbell, and getting at least a smidgen of communication going between engine-room and main armament. The crowd, around 2,200 of them, were getting restless - then, The Bulls got the break they badly craved (and so did I, as it was bloody cold in that stand!).

With just 25 minutes on the clock, and totally out of the blue, Adam Stansfield finally broke the deadlock for The Bulls. A fine, individual goal, it was, the lad taking possession of the ball some way out in the Cambridge half, ghosting past a couple of defenders as if they weren't there, then letting fly, pretty much unmarked, from just inside the 18-yard area. In it flew, like a good 'un, and suddenly Hereford had a game on. Deservedly so.

Despite suffering such a vicious body-blow, the visitors were still proving somewhat troublesome. Clearly a much more comfortable 'cushion' was needed, and that's precisely what Hereford's Andy Williams - no, he doesn't grab a mike and sing 'Moon River' when the game's a bit sluggish - managed to achieve just before the interval. The execution of that second strike was exquisite, involving a neat little bit of interplay with a colleague in and around the edge of the box, before unleashing the second thunderbolt of the night. A splendid 45 minutes worth of good honest graft, and the home side well worth their two-goal lead come the break. Just as well they'd settled Cambridge's hash, really, as the news from Grays, their promotion rivals, was that they were becoming involved in one of those pulsating 'tit-for-tat' 'I-score-you-score' encounters with Burton, and currently getting the worst of it.


Returning to the matter in hand once more, although the visitors brought on their 'trump card', a lad whose height couldn't have fallen all that far short of aforementioned Liverpool beanpole Peter Crouch, and whose 'act' solely consisted of trying to out-jump every single opposition player at set-pieces in the box, in the end it mattered diddly-squat. With only minutes of the second half gone, Williams did it again, this time courtesy a defence-splitting Stansfield cross; all the lad had to do was fire home, and the game was in the bag. Cambridge's hash finally settled, all there was left to do after that was play out the remainder of the half, and all without having their peace of mind unduly disturbed either.

Late on, Hereford brought forth one of their late transfer-window acquisitions, a lad called Stuart Fleetwood, whose previous history was certainly lively. A capture from Cardiff City, he did have a little bit of a sorry past; not so long back, he was involved in a car accident which put a team-mate in a coma for quite some time. I gather that the purpose of the transfer was to give him the chance of a fresh start with another club, the lad having well and truly blotted his copybook with the Welsh outfit. Probably a wise decision; if nothing else, The Bulls are widely known as an outfit more than willing to give the fallen from grace a second chance to shine - and it looked tonight as though in Fleetwood, they'd found a gem. Fast, clever, neat with the ball, and unlucky not to get on the score-sheet himself, he looks one highly likely to reap enormous dividends for the cider-slurpers as far as their current promotion push is concerned.

So there you had it - a workmanlike 3-0 win come the final whistle, and Burton beating Grays meant further progress up the Conference table for the home side. All that remained was to exit the ground and beat it hot-footed to our vehicle, parked around a hundred yards away from the exit. Once inside, a quick butchers via the car radio revealed our score at The Valley to be bloodless, still. And that's the way it stayed, of course; according to The Beeb, it wasn't exactly one of the beautiful game's all-time classics, either.

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