Snow chance! Hucknall boss expects another frustrating, football-less weekend for weather hit side

Andy Graves fully expects another frustrating, football-less weekend for his promotion hunting Hucknall Town side.
Hucknall Town FC v Blidworth WelfareHucknall Town FC v Blidworth Welfare
Hucknall Town FC v Blidworth Welfare

Last weekend’s 3-2 win over Blidworth Welfare was just the second time Graves’ men played in February.

He doesn’t hold much hope for Saturday’s trip to Hilton Harriers.

“I’d be very surprised if it is on, unfortunately,” he said.

“I think it’s going to be another frustrating weekend.

“One or two first teamers were due to play in a reserve game on Thursday night, who haven’t played recently.

“It looks like we’ll be stopped again.

“We’ve only played twice in February and you can tell in the performances.

“Our first game back we were a bit rusty, at the weekend we were a little bit better, went 3-0 up and then made a couple of individual errors to let them back into the game.”

Although Graves trusts his players to maintain their fitness levels, he admits they need match practice.

“They’re a pretty fit bunch to be honest, they look after themselves.

“We were going to do an indoor session to do some fitness, but you can do all the fitness in the world, match fitness is totally different.

“The weather is not helping us or anyone else.”

Hucknall sit second in the Black Dragon Badges South Division, six points behind leaders Sherwood Colliery with a game in hand.

Pinxton lie third and Eastwood Community are fourth.

Graves expected the title race to feature the current top four, and he’s keen to highlight Hucknall’s improvement on last season.

“Those three around us and ourselves are the teams most people would have thought would be up there.

“It’s very tight.

“It’s a shame this weekend might get scuppered, there were some interesting games, but I don’t think that will pan out.

“We’ve equaled our points total from last season and we’ve still got 10 games to go, so progression wise, this could statistically be our best season.”

Graves concedes he’s a bit of a ‘statto’ and keeps track of who played for him, when, and what the results were.

When he looks at the league table and sees a record of 11 wins from 11 at home and only six from nine on the road, he also sees reasons why.

And he points to the number of away games one of Hucknall’s rivals have still to play.

“I’m one for looking at statistics, who we played and what team we put out.

“At Eastwood we slipped up with a couple of minutes to go, we went to Matlock with a very inexperienced keeper and one or two missing and when we went to Sherwood we had six first team regulars missing and we did okay.

“We’ve dropped our points on the road.

“Eastwood have a lot of away games to come because they’ve played nearly all their home games.

“Up to last week Eastwood had played only their second away game since last April.

“They have a lot of away games on the bounce, away from their beautiful carpet.

“Away form is going to be interesting.

“There’s a long way to go, it’s going to go to the wire.”

Graves remains hopeful of adding a striker for the title run-in, although he has suffered a setback.

“We’ve put in seven days for a striker.

“I got turned down by another this week, he wants to stay at the club he’s got an affection for.

“That’s something we could still do with going into the last third.”

At the weekend he lost Dave Leak (groin) and Tevahn Tyrell (calf) to injury.