TOTTENHAM'S Teddy Sheringham ended Hereford's FA dreams with a hat trick which helped earn a fourth round home tie against Wolves.
And with Chris Armstrong claiming a double there was no escaping the FA Cup abattoir for the team they call the Bulls.
There was, however, the mighty consolation of a £150,000 share of the gate for third division Hereford, who never looked like repeating their headline hitting exploits of the early I970s.
Then, they beat top flight teams Newcastle and West Ham at this stage in the space of three seasons but tonight a battling performance was not good enough.
Instead the cutting edge came from Messrs Sheringham and Armstrong, who lifted their season's joint tally to 33 goals.
Twenty of those belong to England marksman Sheringham, who started the goal spree last night after 23 minutes when he fired past Chris MacKenzie from 10 yards following a cut back from Ronny Rosenthal.
And when Armstrong added the second six minutes later with a far post header it followed a corner by Darren Caskey Hereford must have realised their chance had gone
They missed a penalty in the original 1-1 draw, but although they were well organised and played some neat football in the return there was only ever going to be one winner.
Sheringham's second came after 54 minutes when he reacted to score from eight yards after MacKenzie had parried a shot by Ruel Fox. And he completed his treble 10 minutes from time when capitalising on some poor defending.
In between, after 58 minutes, Armstrong superbly directed a header inside the right hand upright and he was also desperately unlucky not to add a third.
Armstrong had a header tipped over after 66 minutes, diverted a Fox cross just an inch too high after 82 minutes and was again thwarted by MacKenzie in the final seconds.
Hereford, meanwhile, were also able to celebrate and when substitute Gareth Stoker cracked a 20 yarder past Ian Walker with 90 minutes on the clock you would have thought he had won the cup.
But Hereford were not disgraced despite the score line and boss Graham Turner sent them out to milk the applause of their travelling fans.
