Hereford: The long road. FA Cup runs and walks to one England's great great traditional grounds.

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Tom Reed

Hereford United, we love you.

We’ll always support you and we’ll follow you through

Our supporters are the best and they do their thing

When the lads to take the field, this is what we’ll sing.

Hereford is an English cathedral city, some 16 miles from the Welsh border, although it feels like a market town.

Continue West for half an hour over the border and you’ll hit the Brecon Beacons National Park and that’s why there’s a slight tinge of Welsh in the accent here.

The Hereford lads are proud to be English and dress in jackets of the CP Company military style but given the SAS is based down the road won’t garrotte you if you spill their pint of cider, as long as you buy them a new one “it’s fair play bud” and a lot of pride for their football club.

Hereford FC are known for the 1972 giant-killing of Newcastle United in which a tired looking Ronald “Ronnie” Radford decided to draw the Bulls level in the FA Cup Third Round replay, with a thirty-five yarder that sent several school shops worth of parker coats on to the Edgar Street pitch.

Radford’s outstretched sleeves in the vintage white Hereford shirt contrasted the brown hues of the parkers and the cut up surface and planted a cup legacy that typecast the club for everyone that heard John Motson’s throaty commentary.

©Tom Reed/ Terrace Edition. Hereford FC.

They were known as Hereford United in those days and now as Hereford FC, but that is only part of the reason we are here.

A Hereford fan, exiled in London, has written to the “Talking Bull” fanzine and complains that when they mention the club, people respond by saying they’ve been to “Hertfordshire plenty of times”.

Hereford FC, like many others, have done away with a printed match-day programme, leaving the fanzine as the sole offering in paper and ink for people wanting a half-time read.

Talking Bull is a genuinely interesting, high-quality publication, going into detail on the state of the club’s finances.

The position of the fanzine in the Edgar Street marketplace alongside the pin badge seller, is indicative of an outfit beautifully stuck in time.

The old incarnation, Hereford United, went to the wall in 2014, relatively quietly in comparison with the press attention garnered by the protesting Southend fans recently when the Essex club was up in the High Court to face winding up petitions.

Poor owners did for Hereford United and when the club was passed from Mr Tommy Agombar, who the Guardian said had a “past conviction for lorry theft”, to a company who dealt with “distressed debt” called Alpha Finance, the writing seemed to be on the wall.

The outfit with the FA cup heritage and long runs in the Football League re-formed as Hereford FC and dropped to the Midland Football League Premier Division in the ninth tier of English football.

Now, a team that can draw two thousand fans a week at that level are going to be on an upward trajectory and three promotions in a row took Hereford to National League North, within sniffing distance of the Football League but smacked in the face with a spade by the financial realities of life as a part-time club. They’ve been knocking about the National North since 2018/19 with several changes of manager and backroom staff.

Talking Bull Editor Simon Wright is obviously concerned at the cash reserves of the club, discussing them in his fanzine editorial while a piece on the Bulls News blog says that “shareholders funds” were “as low as £5000 earlier this year.”

If as stated, it makes today’s FA Cup Fourth Round Qualifying tie with Rochdale AFC all the more important for club coffers. Hereford and Rochdale are old sparring partners, to the point of the draw announcement coming with a groan and it’s a sad scenario that two former Football League sides are no longer duking it out twice a season.

Edgar Street is one of the last remaining league standard traditional grounds in English football, with its curved Meadow End one of the finest examples of the old fashioned terrace. The ground is within walking distance in the city centre and it is no exaggeration to say it is like stepping back in time to an era before the gentrification of the game and the god-awful soulless bowls that so many club execs clamour for.

Without the TV money of the higher leagues, Saturdays are key to non-League clubs like Hereford, with match-day ticket sales, season tickets and the bar take being significant forms of income.

Indeed, an article in Talking Bull, describes how the club “relies” on income from the sale of 50-50 tickets to top up turnover, a form or raffle where the club takes half the proceeds and the winner, drawn at random gets the other half.

While we talk of fan-owned clubs like Exeter and Wimbledon being models to follow, it stands to reason that most non-League and lower league clubs are fan-run, with an army of volunteers making match-day tick and staff who cheer their teams to the rafters.

Hereford United Supporters’ Trust board members Richard and Tony miss the first 45 minutes of every home match, sorting all the tasks in the volunteers’ room at Edgar Street, showing just some of the sacrifice to keep this grand old club going.

That leaves the fans to enjoy a Stowfords in the outside bar and another match at this club that loves and values the world’s greatest cup competition, when so many don’t at football’s top table.

A young drummer from the Meadow End faithful has perched his percussion instrument, covered in Hereford stickers on the A-frame bench. There’s plenty who walk round Hereford in Liverpool shirts but this one’s ready to bang the drum for his local side and there’s respect in that.

Some music blares out of speakers, playing some decent dance tunes but then an R & B dirge which kills the mood. There’s that feeling of Hereford, of having everything they need but needing some help to make the most of what they have.

Why there isn’t four or five thousand here every week is anyone’s guess, as with the cider in the town centre, the short hop to the ground and the Meadow End, they have a proper day out at the football, that is hard to beat.

On the pitch, Hereford have a stubborn team that went the full 90 versus Rochdale and repelled the Northern side replete with League quality, of the likes of Ian Henderson.

A 79th minute slide pass saw loanee Ethan Fremantle beat the Rochdale keeper with a left-footer, leaving Hereford fans to jump onto the Meadow End hoardings and reach for the low October sun.

“We’re on our way, to the Football League, we’re on our way

How do we get there? I don’t know. How do we get there? I don’t care

All I know is we are on our way.”

Sang the Meadow End faithful, knowingly on a long road.

Meanwhile, Hereford manager Paul Caddis noted that the players weren’t allowed to troop into the changing rooms without the significance of the occasion being spelled out. “The club has history in this competition and I made sure the players were well aware of it.”

That’s what we need to do with Hereford FC, make the game understand what an important club they are, not just for the FA Cup’s past but for the game’s future.

A club that represents the best of an old sport, one that hasn’t lost touch with its community, the immediacy of its city centre, nor let its soul dissipate from the gripped fists of another gorgeous cup run.