DOVER GAME LOOKING DOUBTFUL
Saturday’s visitors could “cease football operations”
TOWN BOSS Pete Wild says he will prepare as normal after Saturday’s home game with Dover was thrown into doubt this week.
Dover chairman Jim Parmenter said on Tuesday that “all football operations” at the club could cease in the next couple of days unless the funding saga in the National League is resolved.
At the start of the month, National League clubs were given 28 days in which to vote on the fate of the season.
Clubs have been offered long-term loans to allow football to continue, but many have said they would rather null and void the season rather than take on debt, having been given grants in order to start the season.
And Parmenter said that “unless the situation changes in the next couple of days, I will have no option but to furlough all staff, cut all possible expenditure and cease football operations”.
Even if Dover do agree to play, the weather may intervene, with sub-zero temperatures forecast in Calderdale between now and the weekend leaving the possibility of a frozen Shay pitch.
“We’ve got to prepare as normal,” said Wild.
TOWN MIDFIELDER Luke Summerfield is determined to come back fitter and stronger from his injury lay-off.
Summerfield has arguably been Halifax’s player of the season so far with a string of influential performances in the heart of the Town midfield.
But the 33-year-old now faces at least another couple of months on the sidelines due to a partial tear of his anterior cruciate ligament, which happened in The Shaymen’s 0-0 draw at Summerfield’s former club Wrexham on January 26.
“I felt a little bit uncomfortable in my knee early on in the game, somehow got through the game and we got a half decent result, so it was worth getting through it,” he said.
“I spoke to Aaron (Scholes, physio) at the end of the game about my knee and said it wasn’t right. Come training on Thursday, Aaron had another look at it and sent me for a scan. The results came back with a little tear in my ACL, which wasn’t good news, but that’s football.
“I give massive credit to Aaron. Obviously I got through the game somehow, we still don’t know how, and luckily he looked after me really well on the Thursday and got me a scan straight away because I was desperate to train and play on Saturday. But he was unsure of the prognosis so he wanted to get a scan to make sure everything was alright.”
Summerfield says the injury wasn’t the result of a challenge in the game.
“I slipped early on in the game when I tried to pass, that’s the only time I can really think that it could have happened. Just an innocuous little slip while I was passing the ball. With it being a partial tear, how I got through the game is beyond me.
“But if I’d trained on Friday or played on Saturday then there’s a high probability that it could have fully gone, which would have been a long, long time on the treatment bench. So hopefully now it won’t be as long.”
Summerfield has been told he doesn’t need an operation but is still looking at around three months on the sidelines in total.
“It could have been worse so we’ve got to look at it positively,” he said. “When I found out the news I was gutted, not just for myself but for the gaffer.
“As a footballer I feel like when you get injured, you’re letting your manager down, especially because I’ve been playing. But football is all about staying fit, and I’ve been lucky enough to start the season being fit and being available for selection.
“But obviously now that’s taken a back burner and I’ll just work as hard as I have been doing since the start of the season for the next three months to get myself back fitter and stronger than I was before hopefully.”
Summerfield’s injury is the latest in a long line that Town have suffered this season. Captain Nathan Clarke, midfielder Reuben Noble-Lazarus and strikers Jake Hyde and Matty Stenson have all spent lengthy time on the treatment table, while forward Jamie Allen has been troubled by a knee problem and midfielder Martin Woods has recovered from long Covid.
“From the summer we had, not playing for so long and some of the boys coming back for the play-offs, then not knowing when we’re starting and having such a hectic first couple of months, we’ve said it as a squad that you look back at games and think ‘we’ve always had one or two missing’,” said Summerfield. “We’ve done really well with what we’ve had because we’re not the biggest of squads and we’ve got a great set of boys here. When you look back sometimes you think ‘what if, what if ’, ‘if we’d had 18 fully fit players it would have been different’ but football’s a strange old game.”
Summerfield is now focusing on getting back to action as soon as he can.
“It was in the back of our head that it might be a possibility but not needing surgery is the big bonus,” he said. “So we can start planning to get me back fit. I’ve got to get my head round it and work hard day-in, day-out to try and get back fit.”
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