This Saturday

With City having no game this Saturday, I was wondering if there is a league game that could be brought forward to avoid congestion later in the season. I notice that City are due to be at home to St Albans on FA Trophy third round day. Whilst City won't necessarily reach the third round, they are only two games away from having to postpone that St Albans game. Whereas, with St Albans having lost to Welling in the previous round, both City and St Albans will be without a game on Saturday.

I don't think that it's a good idea. We'll be playing on the following Tuesday anyway and the players and management will probably appreciate the day off as there is a congested Xmas and new year period imminent. Also if we played Saturday and Tuesday it would mean we had 5 consecutive home games in 4 weeks which is far too much for many fans finances.

Too short notice now.

The original tie last week should have been made to play to a finish. There was always a risk of something like this happening. Surely should be a rule that if you cannot play the original tie on the day, usually owing to weather, the rearranged one must have extra time and penalties. We lose out here - the crowd will be pitiful next Tuesday (presumably the date we will play) and we have less break before we travel to Eastbourne. Couldn’t Paulton have had a backup plan to switch to Keynsham if this happened? They did remarkably well to shove in a League Cup tie the other week. I’m guessing they’ve done all they can.

What if we draw with Paulton or Sholing? A replay in the new year presumably. All very messy. More irritating as I was planning to come back this weekend.

stillmanjunior wrote:Too short notice now.

The notice is no shorter than for the FA Trophy game.  Until today City didn't know if they would be playing Sholing or Paulton or not be playing at all.

stillmanjunior wrote:The original tie last week should have been made to play to a finish. There was always a risk of something like this happening. Surely should be a rule that if you cannot play the original tie on the day, usually owing to weather, the rearranged one must have extra time and penalties.

To be fair, this is the third postponement, two at Sholing, and now one at Paulton.

stillmanjunior wrote:We lose out here - the crowd will be pitiful next Tuesday (presumably the date we will play) and we have less break before we travel to Eastbourne.

Exactly why it would make sense to avoid the chance of that happening with the St Albans game.

stillmanjunior wrote:Couldn’t Paulton have had a backup plan to switch to Keynsham if this happened? They did remarkably well to shove in a League Cup tie the other week. I’m guessing they’ve done all they can.

Bit surprised that there was no plan to try and play the game on Wednesday, that would have helped.

Micawber wrote:Also if we played Saturday and Tuesday it would mean we had 5 consecutive home games in 4 weeks which is far too much for many fans finances.

I make it 4 consecutive home games (Dartford, Wealdstone, St Albans and Sholing or Paulton) between the away games at Gosport and Eastbourne.  Anyway, it has worked out that between Gosport on 27th November and Hampton on 28th December, City have only one away game (at Eastbourne), so, I imagine that the shortage of away games, which for many (though not all) are more costly than home games, would easily balance out the cost of those home games.

On a very selfish note, as I’m away this weekend I’m quite pleased with this development....

I was surprised that as this is the week leading up to the next round that they weren’t made to replay on Monday rather than Paulton’s usual midweek night of Tuesday. That would have given more time for the arrangements to be made for the Saturday game (e.g. Sholing if they needed to travel) and also to fit in another game this week if it was postponed. In view of the weather yesterday there must have been a good chance of the game taking place.

As I see it the new arrangement doesn’t really suit anyone (except Ashley!) and I agree with Mark about the likely attendance. As for a replay between City and whoever gets through, that will take place on the Tuesday before the 2nd round! Reminds me of the farce a couple of season back with the Margate tie.

My short notice argument was more with St Albans. They would have known for a couple of weeks that they had no match, they’d then need to organise things like travel and what not. I’m sure they’d prefer a Saturday game here than a Tuesday night but we still need to win two matches for that to happen.

There is a rule now that if both clubs agree, you can go straight to extra time and penalties in the original tie. I believe WSM were knocked out like that. I can only imagine that Paulton believed they’d stand more chance of beating them on their own patch, which is fair enough. Be interesting to hear what we went for two years ago when we ended up in Margate.

The match at Margate was a replay so there would have been no need for any agreement between the clubs. The first match was played at Twerton the Tuesday before, which was delayed by three days because Margate had to play their 2QR tie which had been delayed by the need to reinstate another club who had been knocked out by another club who had broken the rules etc etc...

Frankly this competition seems to be jinxed by instances like these. But as the rules stand why should Paulton have agreed to play to a finish at Sholing last week as that gives their opponents another thirty minutes of home advantage? Clubs will also choose the path which favours them and maybe, as with the FA Cup reforms of recent years, there needs to be a review of the Trophy which appears to have changed little since it’s creation.

Whether fans like them or not, another winter blighted by waterlogged pitches further backs the argument for clubs at this level and below to replace them with 3G.

With Margate I mean there’s the rule in place that the original tie could have finished on the night if both clubs agreed.

I wonder how much longer replays will be in place. A shame because the last couple we’ve been involved in have been classics, far better than the original ties.

With the weather forecast for tomorrow perhaps we should offer them Twerton Park for the replay - at least that way we know that it would definitely go ahead!

Should the unthinkable happen and there’s another postponement on Saturday could it lead to us hosting the winners seven days later instead of going to Eastbourne? Having to play our furthest away fixture midweek in January or February because of this would be farcical.

I reckon they’d make us play the winners on the day of the next round.

comrade powell wrote:Should the unthinkable happen and there’s another postponement on Saturday could it lead to us hosting the winners seven days later instead of going to Eastbourne? Having to play our furthest away fixture midweek in January or February because of this would be farcical.

Would be a bit unfair on Eastbourne especially if they have sponsorship arranged for the game. I seem to recall our friends at Braintree refusing to re-arrange a game from a Tuesday to a Saturday for that reason (and the league not intervening). a few seasons back. More likely to be played in January I would think, perhaps on the day set aside for the replay (7th Jan?).

The fact that our longest away game of the season is scheduled for mid-winter anyway seems a bit ridiculous as there must be the risk of it being postponed then. Would make a lot more sense for us to be going there in say March when we are going to Hungerford, but with so many long trips for us some of them are bound to be at this time of year. If we do eventually get past Paulton or Sholing the next round is on 11 January when we are at Maidstone so we could face a midweek trip there.

Eastbourne is 3G so unless there’s a blizzard it’ll be fine. Already anticipating it to feel like we are in a blizzard anyway.

I’m surprised you didn’t point out to Les that it’s always mid-winter in Eastbourne!

Still raining...

They’re playing and Paulton are 1 up after 7 minutes.

1-1 now

Sholing 2-1 up after 89 minutes, and that's how it ended.

The league table can finally be updated!