Junior clubs face busy spring

Andrew Cowie • Published 14 Jan 2010 14:58 0 Comments

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Lochore Welfare's ground will take time to recover.

AS the Big Freeze continued last weekend local junior football sides are facing a busy spring as the fixture backlog continues to pile up.

East Super League teams Kelty Hearts and Hill of Beath Hawthorn have played only five and six games respectively when normally by this stage of the season they would have completed nine or ten.

Further down the pecking order things are a little better but with last Saturday's card wiped out and this weekend's programme likely to follow the same course things are continuing to get worse.

East region secretary John Reilly said that each week there are 32 games arranged in the East Super, Premier, North, South and Central divisions and clearly wipe-outs cause him a lot of bother.

John told the Times, "At the moment we have 154 postponements in the current season but last term there were over 300 matches called off in total.

"Obviously we are only midway through the winter and there could be a lot of bad weather to come so I hope that we can get back into action within the next week or two."

He explained that while some sides were not too far behind their scheduled programme others were not so lucky.

He added, "Look at Steelend Victoria, they have had problems with their pitch in the wet weather and last played a Central League game on 10th October.

"Hill of Beath Hawthorn have had problems getting their third round Scottish Emirates Cup tie with East Kilbride played. I think it has been postponed five times now so that will be putting the Keirs Parkers well behind schedule.

"The only way we can realistically catch-up after a spell like we have had is to play three games a week once the light nights come in April and if things get really bad and the freeze does not lift for some time we could see four games a week.

"That is not ideal for I know that clubs often find it difficult to field representative sides midweek but if we have to do it then we will do it."

Lochgelly man Ronnie Ross was the fixture organiser in Fife for many years and can remember some pretty bleak winters in the past. He said, "Going back 25 years we used to get cold spells like this regularly and it played havoc with the cards. Hopefully it will break soon or the local clubs will find themselves playing at least three games a week to get the programme completed by early June."

Our photographer called in at Central Park, Cowdenbeath, last midweekto find the area's senior ground under about a foot of snow.

Visits to several junior grounds found things almost identical suggesting that it will take a major thaw to get the district's seven junior sides back into action.

However, things were beginning to improve by Tuesday although it might all come too late to save this weekend's card. See also page 23.

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