21-09-18 – Preview – FA Cup 2nd Qual Rd – Kidderminster Harriers Vs Atherstone Town

It’s FA Cup time again for the Harriers but for our visitors tomorrow, Atherstone Town, it’ll be their fourth game in the cup and also the fourth time in a row that they have to travel to a game. So far they’ve done well in beating Hanley FC 4-1 then Bedworth Utd 3-1 before getting through to meet up with us by winning 1-0 at Quorn Town. Now they’ll be hoping to grab a bigger scalp by, at least, getting a result at Aggborough.

We used to be regular sparring partners back in the past when we were both in the West Midlands Leagues but our paths have changed since the 60’s and 70’s and we now play four levels apart with them now being in the Midland Football League (Division One) while we have progressed to the National North via the Football League. 

We have met three times before in the FA Cup with the most recent in October 1992 when goals from Richard Forsyth and Jon Hanson saw us through to play Exeter City at home with us exiting the competition by a solitary goal. The two other games came back in the mists of time when we first met them in 1908 winning 4-2 and then a few years later in 1911 we faced them again and won again. This time 2-0 but none of us were there so we have no memories of those two games.

The only member of the Atherstone squad that we have an history of is James Dance. He played us for the 2013-14 season and scored three times in nineteen games. He went on to play for Rushall Olympic, Stafford Rangers and Chasetown before joining Atherstone at the start of the current season.

We come into this game on the back of our first setback of the season when we came away from a miserably rain swept Chester with our first defeat of the season. The 3-1 scoreline looked good for us seeing as Chester should really have won at least 5-1. A penalty from Ed Williams midway through the second half was possibly our only shot on target all evening and we looked poor all over the pitch. We just have to hope that it’s now out of our system and we can get back to winning ways tomorrow.

We should have no injury problems but there could be a doubt with Lee Vaughan after he took a bad knock to the shin and that could well have ballooned up since then. We have also let another out on loan this week too with Ed Wagner going to Redditch Utd for a month long loan. With Liam Truslove going out on loan to Rushall Olympic last week we’re looking a little thin on the ground considering we’re allowed to have up to seven substitutes for FA Cup games. 

Atherstone will be looking forward to this game with them having come this far on the back of some very good results. They’ll be thinking that they could win this one too but I think that by Monday we should find ourselves being drawn out of the hat for the next series of games when we could come up against yet another team from our distant past.

Photo © KHFC

Teams:

Harriers from:

Hall, Palmer, Taylor, Horsfall, O’Connor, Digie, Vaughan, Johnson, Baxendale, Weeks, Austin, Bradley, Chambers, Daniels, Richards, E Williams, Ironside.

Atherstone Town from:

O’Neill, Beeson, Goodby, Gould, Kirton, Haines, Cartwright, Bilic, Thomson, Walker-Donovan, Baxter, Obi, Mullings, Quinn, Gray, Dance, Ruff, Elkes, Eggleton, Naughton, Harris, M Williams, O’Neill-Martin.

Referee: Mr Lewis Smith. Wigan

Talk about the game here

Links to Atherstone Town websites here

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