New Year 1998 - Difficult Times at Hereford

It's the FA Cup this weekend and whilst Hereford United are not involved in this round, it's an ideal time to turn back the pages to New Year 1998. Life was very difficult at Edgar Street then as this article from the Times explained.

Graham Turner's secretary, Joan, was in her office trying to cope with the phone calls. The new year programme was placing extra demands on those staff remaining at Hereford United after the redundancies that followed the club's loss of Nationwide League status last May. As usual, when Hereford are on an FA Cup run, people wanted to know where Ronnie Radford was.

"I have been here 18 years and I am sick of it," Joan said. Of that goal. "Neil Grayson has got to score one to kill that Ronnie Radford goal so we never hear that name again." She has worked under ten managers at Hereford, but the name that keeps coming up is Ronnie Radford.

Even Turner, the Hereford director of football, admits to being fed up with it, though one imagines that, if the Vauxhall Conference club's directors shared that view, they would have taken down the photograph in the boardroom by now. It is still there on the wall in black and white: "Goal of the Century", the caption reads, though Radford is not in shot. The boot that launched the cannonball is 30 yards away from the Newcastle United goalkeeper in the picture.

Goal of the century? As far as Hereford's history is concerned, it remains so, but there are 24 months to go. However, for Grayson, the club's leading scorer, to have a chance of granting Joan her wish, Hereford will need to beat Tranmere Rovers in the third round on Sunday. It is no good scoring a fabulous goal to eliminate a first division club. You cannot score the goal of the century against Tranmere. It has to put out a big club, like Newcastle United.

Newcastle, from the old first division, were beaten 2-1 by non-league Hereford at Edgar Street in 1972. Radford scored the equaliser, Ricky George the winner. At the end of that season, Hereford entered the Football League, but, in 25 years before dropping out again, their spoon hardly made a sound against the trophy. Now they are a non-league club again, they are up to old tricks.

After six seasons in which they eliminated only one league club and became one of non-league football's favourite dishes, going out to Yeovil Town, Bath City and Hitchin Town, Hereford have rolled over two league opponents this season. In the first round they put out Brighton, who had consigned them to the Conference. In the second round, they defeated Colchester United.

"I suppose, as a non-league club, there is less pressure," Turner said. "As a league side, you are on a banana skin." Sittingbourne, from the Dr Martens League, threw one under Hereford in the fourth qualifying round and they almost fell. Hereford trailed 2-1 towards the end. "I looked at the sky and asked: 'Why me?' " Turner said. "I could not believe it could happen so soon after Brighton." But the equaliser came and now the fourth round is beckoning. They have never been beyond that stage.

The only bull Turner talks is Freetown Kudos, the club mascot, a one-ton Herefordshire beast occasionally paraded before matches. Not this Sunday, though. "Haven't had time to think about it," Joan said. There is refreshing straight talking in Turner's replies to key questions. Formerly the manager of Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers, is he content at Hereford? Certainly not. Ambition still burns.

"There might be an opportunity to manage somewhere bigger than Hereford," Turner - "a young 50" - said. "People knew that when I came but, if the opportunity comes up, it must mean I have done something here." Next question. Which is more important, beating Kidderminster Harriers in the Conference yesterday or Tranmere? "It's got to be Tranmere," he replied. No platitudes about the league being the bread and butter.

His reasons are "financial". A glamour tie would earn Hereford some £200,000. "That would ease our financial problems," Turner said. He did not want to draw Tranmere - estimated profit on Sunday, £10,000 - and does not mind admitting it. "Disappointing," he said.

Two months ago, Hereford were unable to pay the players on schedule and, though that crisis has passed, a Cup windfall would enable Turner to keep them on full-time next season. He has taken a voluntary 30 per cent cut in salary and helps out wherever he can. "We do not have a commercial manager and I take any opportunity to sell a board on the ground or an advert in the programme," he said.

Hereford are in voluntary administration, nearly £1 million in debt. "That means we have to keep control of our own affairs and there is no administrator coming in, wielding an axe," Turner said. "We have a meeting of creditors this month to sort out a deal to ease the situation and stop the potential winding-up of the club."
One thing that Turner will not admit is that the chance of an immediate return to the third division has gone. "You never give up hope," he said, perhaps recalling that Brighton were 12 points adrift at the foot of the league in December last season.

After their 4-1 win away to Kidderminster yesterday, Hereford are 19 points behind Halifax, the Conference leaders. If John Aldridge, the watching Tranmere manager, left uneasy at the quality of Hereford's play, he may be comforted to know that Richard Leadbeater will not be available on Sunday. Leadbeater played a part in all four Hereford goals, scoring three and making the other, but, as a loan signing, he is prohibited from playing in the Cup.

Going out of the league was Turner's most traumatic football experience. "I had never seen so many grown men cry: in the boardroom, on the terraces, in the dressing-room," he said. If bulls could cry, Freetown Kudos would no doubt have been standing in a puddle. At Wolves, Turner left when abuse from fans became intolerable. At Hereford, supporters voted to raise admission prices this season in a survival gesture.

Relegation inspired a book on the club Hereford United: The League Era . Ron Parrott, the author, suggests that David Icke, the broadcaster turned Green Party eccentric, is "arguably Hereford's best-known former player", a goalkeeper in their first league season. Try telling that to Joan.

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