Hungerford Town facing mighty challenge

Hungerford Town have no illusions about the task awaiting them when they take on Whitley Bay in the FA Vase quarter-finals at Bulpit Lane next Saturday.

“They’ve got to be a good side to go down to Truro and win down there,” Alan Clark, the Hungerford manager, said. “Everyone knows that Truro have a horrendous amount of money and a great record in their league. Whitley Bay have a good cup pedigree. They’ve won the Vase before. I don’t want us to be embarrassed. We don’t deserve that because we go out and try to play decent football.”

The Hellenic League club showed their character by coming through their fifth-round replay away to Greenwich Borough last Saturday. They fell behind in the 74th minute but equalised inside a minute and snatched victory in the second minute of four minutes’ stoppage time.

Badar Mohammed’s goal for Greenwich came, Clark said, when his centre half slipped and allowed the forward to break clear and place the ball away from the goalkeeper. “From the kick-off we pushed right forward and won a free kick that Tony Clark took quickly for Jamie Gosling to get in and score,” Clark said. “I was really pleased with the way that the team reacted and took advantage when Greenwich switched off a little. It seemed to pick us up for the rest of what had been a very tight game.

“We thought it was going to go to extra time before Paul Powell crossed into the box. There were two or three people who could have dealt with it but the the ball reached Gosling who stabbed a foot at it. Everybody stopped. If somebody had reacted they would have been able to reach it but nobody did and the ball travelled like a snooker ball heading into a pocket and just trickled over the line.”

The match finished with a mass brawl after which Paul Bedwell, the Hungerford captain, and Craig Shand, a substitute, were sent off along with Dave Waters, the Greenwich captain, and Mohammed. “I don’t really want to talk any more about it,” Clark said. “I’ve spoken to two or three of our players and I am secure in the knowledge that we don’t have Ricky Hatton on our side as Greenwich had claimed.”

The presence of Powell, who did not play in the first meeting between the sides, was a bonus for Hungerford. Powell had been a Vase winner with Didcot Town along with Ian Concannon. “He’s a very good and experienced footballer,” Clark said. “He’s three or four weeks away from getting to full fitness. His last club was Didcot. I don’t know what happened there but he had stopped playing. I asked him if he wanted to come up to training. He seemed to enjoy it and was happy to sign on.”

A league match on Tuesday, away to Witney Town put another game into Powell’s legs. Hungerford were held 0-0, which extended the goalless sequence of Concannon, who had previously scored 31 times since joining the club in September, that stretches back to Boxing Day. “It was a pretty terrible game,” Clark said. “Parts of the pitch were half-frozen. We had five or six chances but couldn’t put them away. It may be the Vase. We don’t want it to be but it’s an understandable distraction.”

What is certain is that the quarter-final will bring a small-scale invasion from the North-East to Bulpit Lane. “There’s nothing better for players than the buzz of playing before a big, passionate crowd,” Clark said. “I just hope that we start the game well enough to stay in it - and then anything could happen. But we are big underdogs. Whitley Bay have to be red-hot favourites.”

WALTER GAMMIE