FC Halifax Town fans surely didn’t expect to be one point away from relegation in the National League with only seven games remaining to play a year ago when they were dreaming of a Wembley playoff final.
The FC Halifax Town have struggled for form and consistency all year, but relegation to the National League South is a real possibility if Luke Garrard’s club fails to rediscover some form against their opponents.
After reaching the playoff semi-finals last season, FC Halifax Town has crumbled catastrophically this season, leading some to wonder if Garrard’s time with this team is up.
In less than nine months, Meadow Park has progressed from 45 minutes from Wembley to a couple games away from playing regional football next year. It’s quite the fall from grace. However, it can be traced back to a recent period in which a year of highs was followed by a year of difficulty.
Given their track record in prior years, this year’s performance is not surprising; it’s almost as if they’re recovering from the disappointment of the previous season rather than going one further and being promoted.
FC Halifax Town doesn’t score many goals either. A single goal can win a game, and FC Halifax Town has gotten extremely good at shutting down shop or at least taking a point. Only once in the last six years have they scored more than 55 goals in a forty-six-game season, and on average, a quarter of their matches have ended in a tie during the same time span.
Boreham Wood is constructed around a solid backline. Nathan Ashmore and Jamal Fyfield are stalwarts with a defensive mindset that few can overcome. However, beside those two are Femi Ilesanmi and Chris Bush, and while neither is yet in their late thirties, this is an area of the squad that requires younger recruits to supplement the expertise they already possess. They’ve had a lot of injuries this season, but so has every other club at this level.
In previous years, the lack of a consistent goalscorer has not handicapped them. Last season, they advanced to the play-offs, with Lee Ndlovu scoring the most with eleven goals. You have to go back six years to locate a Boreham Wood player who scored twenty goals, which was also the last time they scored more than 55 in a season.
Garrard is in his ninth year as manager at Meadow Park, one of the longest tenures in the division, yet there comes a point when each manager has carried a team as far as they can. Attendance has not expanded off the pitch in the same way that the club has grown on it. Sometimes a change in scenery, whether forced or in While Wood’s style of play isn’t particularly appealing, it has proven effective in getting Garrard mentioned in circles above when linked with EFL jobs, but relegation this season, while blotting his CV, could mean a parting of ways, though it wouldn’t be the end of Garrard at this level.
