Alton were left kicking their heels on Saturday when their away match against Balham in the Combined Counties Premier Division South was postponed because of an unplayable pitch – and boss Kevin Adair was left frustrated that the decision wasn’t made earlier on the day.
Balham groundshare with AFC Croydon Athletic, and Adair was already well on his way to the ground when the decision was made to postpone the fixture.
“It was frustrating as the game was in doubt at 8.30am but it took until 12.15pm to make the decision,” said Adair.
“I don’t know why the decision couldn’t have been made by 10.30am or 11am – it’s common courtesy. I was only about 15 minutes from the ground as I tend to get to games quite early.
“Where we were moved from the Wessex League in the summer we also have people who are Portsmouth based and have to do a lot of travelling.
“We’re not that well off as a club in terms of what we can do financially for the players.
“What can I do? There’s nothing I can do about it – but a bit of common courtesy would have been appreciated.”
Despite the postponement, Adair was able to keep his players ticking over on Saturday with a hastily-arranged training session.
“We put on a training session for the lads at the club at 3pm and it was a chance to get the group together,” said Adair.
“We haven’t been able to train that often as our development team have had Tuesday night fixtures at the club. We need the group to be training together.”
The Brewers entertain Guildford City on Saturday at Anstey Park (3pm), before a home fixture against Fleet Town next Tuesday night (March 28) at 7.45pm.
Adair is fully focused on the Guildford game, and while he is expecting a tough encounter he insists his side should approach the game with a confident mindset.
“I’m expecting a tough game against Guildford, but we produced one of our better team performances when we won there 2-0 earlier in the season,” said Adair.
“We didn’t necessarily show our best quality that day, but we did what needed to be done.
“It’s a home game so we’ll be going into it full of confidence, but I’m sure Guildford will be approaching it the same way.
“I’ve called us the nearly men recently as we’ve lost only three of our past ten games but have drawn five. We played seven of the top eight in that run, but now with the Guildford and Fleet games we’ve got two home games against teams in and around us.
“If we can get a couple of wins it completely changes things.
“Apart from the Banstead game, we’ve been playing teams who are above us.
“It’s still in our own hands. If we get three or four results, people will say they don’t know what I was worried about – but we have to be focused as there are no easy games in this league.”