FROM the Independent:
Believe it or not, there are two clubs facing the threat of relegation from the Football League today.
By now, the world and his Jack Russell knows that Brighton are facing the drop, and for the last few weeks civilisation, at least that part of it between London and the South Coast, seems to have been in shock at the prospect.
Despite all the hullabaloo over Brighton, Hereford are also facing the drop and today's game with the Seagulls at Edgar Street will decide which of the two plunges over the precipice.
Unlike Brighton, Hereford have not had the huge amount of sympathetic media attention to whip up support, probably because it is not within commuting distance of London, it isn't supported by Des Lynam or any other celebrity, not even Tony Gubba, and it doesn't have the huge number of glory fans that the South Coast club has attracted in its 90 minutes of need.
As far as everyone outside Hereford is concerned, there are only two possible results today: Brighton go down or Brighton stay up.
Now Hereford may not be in the golden triangle of the South-east, or in a northern oasis like Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, but it is a good, solid, honest club, the meat and two veg of middle England football and the Third Division, and it deserves to survive in the League.
Hereford is a traditional family club where the fans don't riot, don't invade the pitch, don't get hauled away by the police or get banned, and don't court publicity. It is true that in times of adversity the odd fist is shaken in the direction of the directors, who, incidentally, still sit under the same corrugated roofs as the rest of us - no executive boxes here - but that is the limit of any antisocial behaviour.
Hereford is a club where jokes about linesmen leaving their spectacles at homes still raise a chuckle, where mints are exchanged between strangers, where the Cornish pasties are still served brittle-black at the edges from old-fashioned warming cabinets, and where burning-hot Oxo is the favourite half-time tipple.
Twenty-five years ago, when Hereford burst into the Football League and were then subsequently promoted within a season under Colin Addison, they brought a breath of fresh air to the stagnant old Fourth Division, which was then almost impossible to get into because outsiders had to be elected rather than promoted.
For people like Frank Miles, who was club chairman when United were elected, and Addison, now managing Merthyr Tydfil, and for today's fans like my son, Ben, the only student who commutes from Manchester to Hereford to watch decent football, the drop into the GM Vauxhall Conference would be a disaster and one from which the club might never recover.
The club's managing director, Robin Fry, has said the playing staff will remain full- time should the unthinkable happen today, in a bid to get back into the League at the first attempt. But with little spare money around and with crowds even in the League running at around a lowly 3,000, the prospects in the Conference would not be good.
For 25 years Hereford have been a more useful member of the League than clubs that have bumped around the bottom for the best part of a century and rarely achieved anything. True, the trophy cupboard at Edgar Street is a little light and we have had a few near misses in the relegation zone over the last few years, but last season, don't forget, we were in the play-offs for promotion from the Third Division.
Clubs like Hereford are what football should be all about: places where you can watch 90 minutes of football for a fair price on terraces where supporters curse and moan about their team much of the time and then spend the remainder cheering them on.
There are no big businesses or millionaires vying for boardroom power at Hereford. We do not - thank God - have too many glory supporters and we certainly don't have much money.
When the game kicks off today, it will be almost as evenly balanced as it is possible to get. Both clubs have 46 points. Hereford have the worst home record, while the visitors Brighton hold the worst away record.
The stakes are high, but for the sake of small clubs with loyal, law- abiding fans, for clubs who are not fashionable or rich, and for clubs who never get mentioned on Match of the Day, Hereford should and must win.
But if Hereford go down today, the League will be a poorer place.
RICKY George, reports the Daily Mail, scorer of non-league Hereford's winning goal when they humbled Newcastle in the FA Cup 25 years ago, waved the flag for his former club before today's relegation showdown with Brighton.
Hereford must win at Edgar Street to survive in Division Three and George, now 51 and a businessman, said: "I'll be desperately sad if they go down. Not so much for the players, but the supporters and chairman Peter Hill, who's put his life into the club.
"It may be a football backwater, but the people down there are as passionate as Manchester United supporters.
"I know there'll be a lot of sympathy for Brighton after all they've been through. They have the great League traditions, whereas Hereford are still regarded by some as newcomers, but nobody has a divine right to stay in this League."
May 3rd:
HEREFORD 1 Brighton 1
A report from the Independent:
Relegation happens over a season, not just in one game, but that will be no consolation to Hereford United who lost league status yesterday after their fellow Third Division strugglers, Brighton, claimed the draw that allowed them to stay up by virtue of a better scoring record.
After 25 years in the lower divisions, Hereford are down into the GM Vauxhall Conference - a league whose increasing strength makes the romance of an instant return unlikely.
Nevertheless Hereford played valiantly yesterday and took what promised to be a vital lead through a cruel own-goal. But a Brighton equaliser from Robbie Reinelt, just eight minutes after he had come on as substitute, proved an insurmountable hurdle for the home side - many of whom left the pitch in tears at the realisation of their fate.
For Brighton, who brought close to 3,500 fans with them - truly a flock of Seagulls - the game completed a remarkable escape generated since the appointment of Steve Gritt as manager last December.
"I was glad when the game started after all the hype," a breathless Gritt said afterwards "But I wouldn't want to go through all that again."
For his Hereford counterpart Graham Turner, the day was too much to bear. Later, with the ground now deserted, he quietly announced his intention to offer his resignation. "I have to take responsibility for what's happened here over the season. I've just been into the dressing-room and it's awful in there. But that's football I suppose."
Hereford's tenure on the league had looked secure for the first hour as their powerful three-man attack of Tony Agana, John Williams and 18- goal top-scorer Adrian Foster put the Brighton defence under constant pressure.
Their enterprise in the context of a brutally tense occasion was almost heroic although the circumstances of their goal were a perverse form of divine intervention. Agana wrestled free inside the Brighton box and was able to turn the ball across the face of the goal, where Foster was waiting but Brighton's Kerry Mayo stuck out a foot to send the ball into his own net.
The young midfielder fell face down on the turf so abject was his misery and a suddenly nervous Brighton did well to complete the half without conceding the second goal that would have done for them. But as the clock ticked on towards the drop zone Hereford's energy drained away while Brighton were urged on by their increasingly frantic travelling support.
A poor goal-kick by the Hereford keeper Andy de Bont set up the Brighton equaliser with Craig Maskell's volley rebounding from the post for Reinelt to tap home.
Chances opened up at either end but Hereford had the best in injury-time when Foster was put clean through but could only drive his shot straight into the relieved hands of Mark Ormerod. The Hereford fans slumped in despair.
At the final whistle a huge line of riot police occupied the pitch to prevent a wedge of home fans from getting to the Brighton end. But there seemed little malice left in these melancholy supporters, who were applauded sympathetically by their Brighton counterparts, fans who know only too well that the misery could have been theirs.
HERE'S a YouTube Video from the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4SyMPHlwn8
AND another longer video at: http://vimeo.com/23283912
May 5th
ANOTHER report on the Brighton game - again from the Independent
It started with more than a century of League history on the line, and it ended with a chubby, cheerful middle-aged man waving a toupee in front of a huddle of reporters and then perching it on his gleaming crown. Such was the mood at Edgar Street on an afternoon when the tension threatened to drive everyone mad.
Strangest of all, the jolly man with the wig was Peter Hill, chairman of Hereford, who had just watched as his team, the ultimate victims of Brighton's astonishing run of results in 1997, were stripped of their League status - unless the League's plan to bring in 16 Conference teams and regionalise the Third Division comes to fruition.
The hairpiece, Mr Hill assured us, was "to wipe the tears away", and on the terraces at least, there were plenty of those, whether of grief or relief. This was perhaps the scrappiest 1-1 draw all season in a division which sees more than its share, yet for the 3,500 among the sell-out crowd of 8,000 who had travelled from the South Coast, no point could be more precious.
Their hero, too, is far from fully thatched, but as the Brighton fans love to sing of Steve Gritt, "he's got no hair, but we don't care". The Seagulls' form since Gritt's arrival late last year, when the side were 11 points from safety, has been exceptional, particularly at the now defunct Goldstone Ground. If they can pick up the same thread next season, wherever their new home might be, any late-season dramas are likely to concern promotion, not relegation.
Not that you would have thought it during a desperate first half. Hereford, who had to score, lined up 3-4-3, and proceeded to swarm all over the visitors. Tony Agana was magnificent, winning four out of every five of the long balls which were fired at him with tedious regularity, while his pace and strength were a constant problem for the Brighton defence. Within minutes, they were nervous to the point of panic, and never more so than after 20 minutes, when Kerry Mayo attempted to put a low cross behind for a corner only to find his own net instead.
The Seagulls had one foot in the Conference, and the second might have followed after 34 minutes, as Agana beat Mark Ormerod's wild rush outside his area and crossed for Adrian Foster, whose headed attempt was blocked. In the final analysis, though, what condemned Hereford was their defeat at Orient seven days earlier.
Brighton's salvation arrived with 26 minutes left. Craig Maskell's excellent long-range volley beat Andy deBont and then passed him once more on its way back from the far post. Robbie Reinelt, a recent and influential substitute, applied the finishing touch.
The tension was now unbearable, and it was Hereford who felt it most as they set off in search of another lifeline. Passing and discipline disintegrated, but even then, Foster wasted two excellent chances - as, admittedly, did Maskell - before they finally slipped out of the League.
"I feel totally responsible," Graham Turner, Hereford's manager, said afterwards. "I'm going to take Monday off, it's a Bank Holiday after all, and then I'll come in on Tuesday morning and do the decent thing by handing in my resignation. Then it will be up to the people around me."
May 7th:
HEREFORD have persuaded Graham Turner to withdraw his offer to resign. Turner, the club's director of football, had offered to stand down following Hereford's demotion to the GM Vauxhall Conference on Saturday
May 10th:
QUOTE of the week:
I will be staying as chairman. No other idiot wants to come forward - Peter Hill, chairman of Hereford United, relegated from the Nationwide League.
May 12th:
AND another one from Peter Hill:
"Hereford will not die. We've had 25 wonderful years and we'll be back. When I took over I had hair. Not any longer. I was going to wear a toupee if we won today. Now I'll use it to wipe away my tears."
Later striker John Williams remembered that day.
Williams spoke candidly about how he sat in the home changing room at Hereford United's Edgar Street on the last day of the 1996-97 season, faced up to life as a non-league player - and felt petrefied
"I had a three month spell there and we went into the last game needing to win against Brighton to stay up," recalled the beanpole striker.
"We were 1-0 up until about the 89th minute when they equalised.
"Then to cap it all we actually had a great chance to snatch it 2-1 and missed it.
"We went back into the changing room and I have never seen a team of players so numbed in my life.
"There were lads crying openly and others just going around hugging their team mates looking for support. It was a scene of utter devastation."
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