Fixtures call to preserve future: Brent
BRENT Peters said the decision to postpone Bacup Borough’s festive fixtures was taken with a view to preserving the club’s longterm future.
Games around the Christmas period are normally seen as moneyspinners for clubs at North West Counties level – but with Covid restrictions severely impacting on clubs’ income streams, it made more financial sense for Bacup to postpone the fixtures.
Peters held discussions with the club’s accountants last week to talk about Borough’s short and long term plans, bearing in mind that the current season has only seen the club feature in three games.
And if the news filtering out of Westminster is anything to go by, we could be looking at a further lockdown in early 2021 throwing the entire season into disarray.
“I’ve spoken to my accountants about the current situation and after a long chat they have advised me that if we can postpone our up and coming fixtures during the festive period then financially that would be better for the club,” said Peters.
“The fact that whilst we sit in Tier 3 we can’t open the bar or sell refreshments has caused us financial hardship as it has for many clubs operating at this level of the game.
“The money coming through the turnstile is simply not enough especially when we’ve got officials and players’ expenses to pay.
“It was an easy decision to make, and one I don’t regret. This club means everything to me and I’m not going to see it fall over something that can be avoided.
“I’ve been in dialogue with the league for the past few weeks to discuss my concerns, so they already knew my position on the matter, so when they asked me if I’d like to stand the team down over Christmas and into 2021 then it was a no brainer.”
The news coming from the league highlighted that only Bacup Borough, Alsager Town, Hanley Town and Eccleshall had made the decision to postpone its fixtures.
Since that announcement was made, clubs playing in the Northern Premier League including Ramsbottom United have also followed suit and stepped their games down.
And in a season that has seen very little in the way of football it’s easy to see why clubs would want to protect and safeguard the longevity of their clubs.
Peters was disappointed that there wouldn’t be any festive football happening at West View with a potential game with Prestwich Heys scheduled for Boxing Day.
But under the current climate he was making no apologies for the decision.
‘This club means everything to me and I’m not going to see it fall over something that can be avoided’
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” he said. “At the moment the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and I’m not going to risk 140 years of history on a season that in my opinion looks doomed already.
“We already know what happened last season with the null and void fiasco, putting the club under unnecessary pressure for that scenario to come about again isn’t a risk I’m willing to take.
“And from what I’ve been witnessing over the past week on social media it seems that a lot of clubs up and down the land share my stance on the matter.”
Borough had been due to play last weekend but their scheduled fixture away at Ashton Town was postponed due to Covid cases at the opposition club.
As reported in last week’s edition of the Free Press, the Borough players have continued to train in isolation during the lockdown period and have been focused on restarting the season in the North West Counties League.