13-08-21 – Preview – York City Vs Kidderminster Harriers

Preview: Phil Lench

The Harriers open the season tomorrow and at the same time they also open York City’s new stadium too.

After spending years at the decrepit, but quirky, Bootham Crescent the club have now taken ownership of one of those community stadium thingys, in a leisure zone, on some out of town shopping destination. No more will the away fans be able to wander around the citys famous pubs before the game and then walk the short distance to the Crescent and a pee in the health risk toilets before taking up their place on the crumbling steps in one corner of the ground.

Instead we’ll have to browse around Marks & Spencers, John Lewis and get a pint of fizzy ale in the bowling alley before donning sunglasses to sit in one of the multi coloured seats that now seem to adorn most new build stadiums. Except….

….We might not be doing that. Instead, following the farce in getting tickets a few days ago, we might be finding ourselves in a queue to get in while someone tries to sort out the non co-operative bar code scanners and then once we get in find our corner plot occupied by two hundred City supporters. Hopefully everything will fall into place tomorrow but it’s doubtful.

So what do we expect from a game that we’ve been waiting the best part of eighteen months for? A league game that Harriers fans could actually attend.

We don’t have all that many new faces in the side with just five joining us since the season, in theory, ground to a halt in January. At the back we have a new second string keeper, Jamie Emery, while in front of him there is Nathan Cameron & Joe Foulkes (defenders), Mark Carrington (midfield) and Nyal Bell upfront. We’re still waiting to hear if anyone else will be coming in but it does seem that the possibility of Geraldo Bajrami joining us following his trial games is dead in the water.

We’ll be without Amari Morgan-Smith as he serves the first game of his five match ban following sendings off against Chester FC last October and against Hereford FC on Boxing Day plus the extra days handed to him by the FA as an additional punishment. Thankfully Cliff Moyos’ injury is a simple Achilles one but will take around six months before we see him play again.

Because of the suspension and injury we now find ourselves a little short of bodies so we might get to see the promotion of Jack Tolley and James Dutton to the senior squad at some point soon.

City have been bringing new faces in too with Lewis Cunningham (ex Doncaster Rovers), Sam Fielding (ex Salford City), Harrison Hopper (ex Rochdale AFC), Maison Campbell (ex Mansfield Town),  Mark Beck (loan from Harrogate Town), Clayton Donaldson (ex Bradford City), Mackenzie Heaney (ex Newcastle Utd), Jason Gilchrist (South Shields) and Kurt Willoughby (ex AFC Fylde).

Out have gone: Harry Bunn, Jake Cassidy, Harry Flatters, Owen Gamble, Rob Guilfoyle, Reiss Harrison, Charlie Jebson-King, Kieran Kennedy, Jack Redshaw, Harry Spratt, Robbie Tinkler and Alex Wollerton.

That’s a hell of a lot of comings and goings! City don’t appear to have any injury problems.

Is this a game we could win to get our season off to a flying start? Yes, it could be if our defenders can play a blinder because that City side has goals in it and sadly that’s something we don’t seem to have. In our recent friendlies only Ashley Hemmings and Sammy Austin of our available strikeforce got the ball in the net with Sammy grabbing four. We’re going to have to do better than that for the points.

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Simpson, Emery, Richards, Cameron, Penny, Foulkes, Lowe, Austin, Montrose, Lissimore, Carrington, Bell, Martin, Freemantle, Hemmings, White, Sterling-James.

York City from:

Jameson, Campbell, Barrow, Brown, Duckworth, Haase, King, Newton, Degruchy, Dyson, Heaney, McLaughlin, Woods, Wright, Beck, Gilchrist, Cunningham, Jones, Willoughby, Donaldson, Fielding, Hopper.

Referee: Mr Michael Barlow. Bolton

Talk about the game here

Links to York City websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here