24-12-24. Hereford FC Vs Kidderminster Harriers. Match preview

Preview:Phil Lench

After a season away from it we’re back to our annual Christmas trip to Hereford this Boxing Day. This time there’s an added spice to the game with our allocation of 700 sold out in days and some fans complaining that they’ve lost out and wanted more tickets given to us. They were warned not to book their seats at the last minute and now they’ve missed out. I’ll be there though.

With both of us in the play-off places there’s another bit of spice we can add in and those three points would give one or the other bragging rights for the time being. We have the upperhand at the moment having played a game less than the Bulls, and three points better off than they are, so a win for the Harriers would take us six points in front of them and still a game in hand.

Both teams have a good make up of former players with Hereford having the most previously Harriers players:

Hereford: Matt Preston, Yusifu Ceesay, Kyle Howkins, Sammy Robinson, Jason Cowley and Jaiden White.

While we have four former Hereford players:

Harriers: Paul Downing, Maz Kouhyar, Tope Obadeyi and Reiss McNally.

All of those former Reds are doing well at Edgar Street including, surprisingly, Jaiden White. He was released by the Harriers back in 2022 having come through our academy and played thirty seven times for us. He then wandered around the lower levels for a while before suddenly coming back to us on trial in pre-season. It could be seen that he hadn’t really improved since leaving and the trial wasn’t continued and he returned to Redditch Utd until November when he suddenly signed for Hereford.

We’re pleased with what we’ve got though especially Kouhyar and McNally who are both excellent acquisitions for us and the other two aren’t far behind either.

We have just the three players missing the game. Ben Beresford will be the first back sometime in January while we’re looking at the end of that month/February for both Alex Penny and Luke Summerfield. Luke has had his cast removed and is now in the first stages of light training on his broken leg.

On Saturday, while Hereford were at Scunthorpe Utd holding them to a scoreless draw, we were at home to Southport putting two goals past them and it could have been more. As it was Ashley Hemmings gave us the lead with a stunning ‘worldie’ goal in the first half while Zak Brown added the second in the second half. An equally good goal too.

We must be going into this game as favourites but that counts for nothing in a derby game and against one of our greatest rivals, and at their ground too. No doubt it’ll end up being a 0-0 draw but if we could sneak just one goal for all three points we’ll be heading back to Gods Own County with bragging rights again.

Photo © KHFC

Referee: Ms Stacey Pearson. Bristol

Talk about the game here

Links to Hereford FC websites here

Find Pubs around Kidderminster here