ALVECHURCH players were restricted to a Saturday afternoon contest between themselves after their much anticipated trip to FA Vase finalists Cleethorpes Town fell victim to the weather.

Life doesn't get any easier for promotion chasing Church as they must now travel to the Lincolnshire side on a Thursday night as their fixture backlog begins to bite.

Fed up manager Ian Long admitted: "The games are going to come thick and fast, making things both demanding and difficult."

The Cleethorpes game is now rescheduled for March 22 and Long confirmed: "We will have to leave Alvechurch for 3pm which means people having to get time off work, which isn't easy especially as we has some schoolteachers in the side.

"I always find the traffic worse on a Thursday rather than a Friday night, but we'll just have to be prepared the best we can.

"I'm more worried about the home game against Spalding the following Saturday as it only gives us one day to recover.

"We trained for two hours last Saturday and its just a case of trying to keep the players ticking over."

Church were due to visit Heath Hayes this Thursday in the J W Hunt Cup, a fixture that has already been postponed four times.

Long said: "Because of all the cancelled matches, I will now be sending a much stronger squad to Heath Hayes than I originally anticipated because the players need to get games under their belts".

This Saturday, Church travel to Newcastle Town in an Evo-Stik Northern Premier League Division One South contest before entertaining West Bromwich Albion on Monday in the Birmingham Senior Cup at Lye Meadow.

Church are anticipating a bumper crowd for the occasion, with the winners drawn to play Stourbridge in the semi-finals.