Drury Keen To Avoid A Long Delay

Graham Drury is keeping everything crossed that the current cold snap does not turn into a prolonged spell of trouble. The Corby Town manager has seen his side's last two games in the Blue Square Bet North fall victim to ice and snow.

And he admits to being less than optimistic about the prospects of this weekend's game at Vauxhall Motors going ahead

"Andy Burgess lives not too far from there and he says they've had no snow around that part of the world but some is expected before Saturday," he said.

"We're in the lap of the Gods really but I hope we can get it played because you don't want to be going to Vauxhall Motors on a Tuesday night."

Bad weather not only affects playing games, it also hits training for the Steelmen with their Rockingham Triangle pitch out of action for the time being. We need to train but we can't use our ground and that's a problem," Drury continued.

"There's always the issue with finding alternative training venues and, even when we do that, there's no guarantee of all the lads being able to get in. Some of them live in areas where the snow has been much worse than it has around Corby and it might not be possible for them to make it."

The other big potential problem with snow and ice around is the Steelmen enduring the sort of fixture backlog that hit them last year. After their Boxing Day match with Gainsborough Trinity 12 months ago, Corby didn't play another game for almost a month and that was in the FA Trophy. It was the end of January before they resumed their league campaign and it led to them playing twice a week for most of the rest of the season.

"That sort of schedule would be tough for most clubs, let alone a club with a small squad like ours," added the Corby boss. "We really don't want to be in that situation again but it's a worry that we might be because we've played less league games than a lot of the sides around us due to our FA Cup run."

Meanwhile, the Steelmen have rearranged last Saturday's postponed home game with Alfreton Town for Wednesday, January 26 (kick-off 7.45pm).