Monday, 17 October 2011

Hereford United 2 Bradford City 0

Unfortunately I was away in Amsterdam last week on 'business' and so struggled to get to a laptop and so apologies for not staying in touch - the Guinness was excellent though :-)

I returned to duty on Saturday afternoon to watch the Bulls take on the Bantams in a bottom of the table clash and saw the home side notch up their first win in seven.

As regular sufferers of this blog will know, I have had the opportunity to see Hereford several times recently and just felt they were slowly turning things around. It seems I might have got something right for a change!

Oxford probably deserved to win at Edgar Street, but none of the Herefords players let their heads drop.

They won a hard fought point against Cheltenham and did the same at Swindon. The signs were there that this was not a side prepared to roll over and that must be encouraging for the fans.

While I caught up with manager Jamie Pitman afterwards, it would be wrong to quote him verbatim as it really was just a general chat rater than an interview, I'm sure he won't mind me making some observations and giving the gist of what was said.

Pitman was understandably chuffed with the win, but after Tom Barkhuizen had popped over to shake his hand before going home, he pointed to the departing goalscorer and cited him as typical of the attitudes being shown by the dressing room.

They all just want to play and are backing each other all the way. They work hard and have smiles on there faces and lads like Barkhuizen and fellow goalscorer Steve Leslie (what a scorching 30 yard free kick by the way) are happy to be playing first team football and be given the opportunity to try and make it in the game.

More importantly for Hereford fans, Pitman feels they have the interests of the club at heart whether they are there on loan - like Barkhuizen and Leslie - or are on permanent deals.

While we were talking, young midfielder Harry Pell was being interviewed ten yards away and I asked Pitman if - like me - I thought that Pell had used his brain to draw the foul from Michael Flynn - resulting in the Bradford skipper's second booking and Leslie's goal. He agreed.

Pell had been on a surging run from half way and then drifted across Flynn and the invitation was clear: take my legs or I'm bearing down on goal - either way I'm getting something out of this.

Flynn took the bait followed shortly after by an early bath ... and a real rollocking from manager Phil Parkinson all the way back to Yorkshire, I suspect.

In the position Bradford are in, they need to be doing what Hereford have already done. Grind out points and build a confidence that was there for all to see in the home team.

Parkinson will turn things around there, I have no doubt. He's a good man and a good coach.

But Jamie Pitman is getting his reward now and I will quote one thing he said.

As Barkhuizen drifted away I mentioned the fact that he, Dave Cornell and Nathan Elder were all sharing the same house. He grinned, shook his head and said: "I just don't want to know what it's like in there ... but they're all good lads so I trust them."

My clipping from this morning's paper

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