Hereford FC

One of the best games of football I've ever seen featured Hereford United (the precursor to today's Hereford FC). It was a cold, dark February evening in 2012 and I was at Priestfield in Gillingham. The score finished 5–4, with the Gills coming out on top, but at the 80-minute mark Hereford led 3–2. The next ten minutes, plus stoppage time, were absolute carnage.

Unfortunately for United, their luck didn't improve much in the years that followed. Just two years later, they had suffered relegation and insolvency. Fans took it upon themselves to form a phoenix club and, unable to use the exact name of the club that had just vanished, settled on "Hereford FC" with the tagline "Forever United" on their badge. Nicely done, lads.

They respawned (to use video game parlance my son would understand) in the Midland Football League, the ninth tier of English football. In the years since, they have battled their way back up, with three consecutive promotions to kick things off, dominating teams with their comparatively huge fanbase for that level.

Today they sit in National League North, just within reach of the EFL and restoring their natural position of bobbling around the fourth and fifth tiers of the game. I love seeing these phoenix clubs do well and am currently Googling Hereford kits as we speak to add to my collection. Known as "The Whites" for their home colours, they do look smart when they take to the pitch.

However, it is their other nickname, "The Bulls", which grabs your attention first for very obvious reasons. Their badge features a giant bull. From Hereford.

The Hereford bull. A selectively bred weapon of economic warfare brought to us by the good people of Herefordshire. Emerging from the county's cattle farms in the mid-1700s, the Hereford would become famous – and vital – to a growing and industrialising nation.

The Hereford, with its distinctive white face and red body, is a cattle farmer's dream: hardy, able to survive extremes of temperature, and capable of producing beautifully marbled meat from relatively poor forage. To boot, they tend to have excellent temperaments and are easy to handle.

Farmers in and around Hereford could suddenly boost their profits by switching breeds or introducing Herefords to turn empty or exhausted fields into additional revenue.

The breed caught on and soon spread globally, but it was in the hills of Herefordshire that the secret was first discovered and refined. Legend has it that the process began with local farmer Benjamin Tomkins and two cows, Pidgeon and Mottle, inherited from his father.

This British invention would go on to transform the American West after the Civil War. Herds of longhorns were being driven north from Mexico and, while they were believed to be the best cattle for long-distance ranching, they were no match for the Hereford. The breed proved the equal of the longhorn in terms of endurance while also producing better-quality meat, and farmers across the United States switched. Winning farmers' fair after farmers' fair, the breed quickly won admirers, and the Hereford helped fuel an agricultural revolution in America much as it had done in Britain. An online article from a Montana based agricultural paper calls them the 'Breed the Built the West'. So there you have it.

From the stews served in cowboy towns to fine dining tables in Manhattan, and from tinned beef rations during the First World War to modern supermarkets, the Hereford was there.

Not bad for a city of 50,000 people nestled amongst the picturesque rolling hills near the Welsh border.

Hereford, the city, has a much longer history. First granted city status by Richard I in 1189 (when it was described as being in Wales), the city boasts some beautiful medieval architecture, including the cathedral which houses the ancient Mappa Mundi.

The Mappa Mundi is the world's largest surviving medieval map, created around 1300 and displayed in Hereford Cathedral. Rather than serving as a navigational tool, it presents a religious view of the world, combining Biblical stories, classical myths, animals, monsters and medieval beliefs to teach visitors about Christian faith, morality and salvation.

It does contain some rather unsavoury imagery. For example, it is not very kind to Jews, showing a horned Moses and a depiction of Jews worshipping the Golden Calf in the form of a Saracen devil. The map also portrays women as inherently sinful, including the wife of Lot being turned into a pillar of salt for gazing back at the city of Sodom. But I suppose these days anything that didn't do this would be called woke, wouldn't it?

Before we wrap up this little investigation into Hereford FC there is one more aspect about Hereford's place in the British imagination that we need to mention. Sitting just outside the city is a little military base known as Stirling Lines. There you will find the headquarters of a little British army regiment known as the Special Air Service. The SAS.

Britain's world famous elite fighting unit that has been at the cutting edge of every conflict from the Second World War onwards. The base took the name 'Stirling' in honour of David Stirling, the founder of the regiment. When the British were fighting the Italians and Germans in North Africa it was Stirling, and some like minded courage/crazy eccentrics that founded the Long Range Desert Group. They would drive out into the desert for days at a time and remerge at night behind enemy lines and conduct raids on supply lines and depots. This unit was so successful that it became a regiment in its own right - and in the 1960s it moved to Hereford. The rolling countryside is perfect for military training while the city is still close enough to the major urban hubs that the regiment can get most places pretty quickly if called upon.

So there you have it. Hereford.

Medieval city. Keeper of maps. Fuelled the Industrial Revolution. Home to the most famed special forces regiment in the world - and more importantly - a newly resurgent football club trying to find its way back to the EFL.