HEREFORD manager Pete Beadle has denied illegally approaching an Alvechurch player.

Speaking to our sister paper the Bromsgrove Advertiser, 'Church boss Ian Long said that Hereford tried to contact the central defender behind their back after an earlier approach had been rejected.

And he said that matters came to a head on Sunday when he claims Hereford rang Carter while he was watching the Aston Villa game against Birmingham City - when he was in the company of Alvechurch chairman Richard Thorndike.

"Ash passed the phone over to Richard, at which point Hereford rang off," said Long.

"Then Ash admitted there had been previous conversations between them.

"I want to state here and now that Ash is under contract and all this is doing is having an unsettling effect.

"It's both illegal and disrespectful to Alvechurch.

"As you can tell, I'm extremely unhappy about it because I believed we had a good relationship with Hereford.

"Just because Hereford are a big club, it doesn't mean they can do what they like and I will be speaking with our chairman over the situation.

"I've since been in touch with Hereford manager Peter Beadle and I hope that will be the end of the matter."

However, Beadle said that the only approach he made for Carter was last August and he inadvertently called Carter on Sunday when he was trying to get hold of Merthyr first team coach Ashley Thomas to request two tickets for their match against Dunstable tomorrow night.

"Ashley is a central defender who was at Kidderminster who went to Alvechurch at the start of the season," said Beadle.

"I spoke to Ian because I have a good relationship with him but he said he was under contract and they wanted £20,000.

"That was obviously not going to happen, so that was the end of the conversation.

"Since then, I have brought in Jordan Liburd and Dara O'Shea until the end of the season, so I don't need another central defender.

"Ashley was under contract and I couldn't get him out of it, so I would have been wasting my time.

"We've got Dunstable on Saturday and they've got Merthyr tomorrow night.

"We couldn't get hold of Gav [Williams] or Dean [Clarke] so I tried their first team coach to see if we could pick up two tickets for the match.

"I realised I rung the wrong number so put the phone down.

"Ian rung me straight away and I explained it to him and that was the end of it."