BULLS ARE IN THIS ALL AS ONE
HEREFORD opened their doors before Christmas when we covered their FA Cup replay with Fleetwood Town – we had a fantastic welcome. There are a lot of good people down there who have really helped the club bounce back from some hard times and manager Peter Beadle takes a lot of credit for their success on the pitch. I was talking to the chairman, Ken Kinnersley, about the volunteers who help them on a matchday. The collectiveness to get the snow off the pitch so the Fleetwood game could go ahead was quite something. Non-League fans are unique. It was the same when we covered a game at Wrexham. People were in at 6am shovelling snow off the pitch. There’s me moaning I have to leave at 8am from Brighton to get up to somewhere like Macclesfield on the train, and there’s volunteers who love their club so much that they just want to give their whole day to helping. Volunteers are so important to Non-League clubs and it’s great to see what can happen when supporters feel a part of something. Just look at the support Hereford took to Wembley for the FA Vase final a couple of years ago. I remember playing against the old club in League One when I was at Brighton and it was very sad to see what happened when they went out of business. But they’ve really used it to their advantage to come back stronger. When you’re getting crowds of 2,500 every week for home games it shows the fight in the football club. I really hope they keep going up to where they were.