City frustrated by a late call-off at chilly Barrow
EXETER City will have to face another 660 mile round trip to Barrow after Tuesday’s League Two fixture was called off less than an hour before kick-off.
After the original clash on January 2 was postponed due to a frozen pitch, a third pitch inspection at Holker Street at 5.30pm saw referee Ross Joyce rule that the ground was not fit to play on.
The turf had passed two earlier pitch inspections, and the game had been moved forward from a 7pm kick-off to 6.30pm in a bid to beat the freezing temperatures, but with just an hour before the game was due to begin, the referee called the fixture off.
It means the Grecians will have travelled all the way to the frozen north of the country for nothing, and face the long journey home before a similarly long trip to Oldham Athletic on Saturday.
The next available date for when the match could be re-arranged for is not until March 30, as the two midweeks before then that City have free, the Bluebirds already have rearranged fixtures scheduled.
But with that being the week before Easter and a round of Good Friday fixtures, it may be April 13 when it is re-arranged to.
Meanwhile, on-loan goalkeeper Jokull Andresson has said that it is amazing to be back at St James Park for his second spell at Exeter City and that he plans to do all he can to pay back the fantastic support he has had from the fans.
The 19-year-old Icelander made nine appearances in the red and white of Exeter City when he joined on an emergency loan following injuries to Lewis Ward and Jonny Maxted last year.
But last week a deal for him to join from Reading until the end of the season was penned and he has gone straight back into the City side.
Ironically, he played against the Grecians just hours before his move, keeping a clean sheet for Morecambe in their 2-0 win - a move he didn’t know he would be making at the time.
Prior to joining City in October, Andresson’s only senior appearanc
es had been a five game spell for Hungerford Town in 2018, and he said that he was finding getting game time difficult, and initially couldn’t believe that the Grecians wanted him to come and join them.
“I was struggling to find nonleague teams as they didn’t want me, and when had the chance of the emergency loan at Exeter, it blew my mind. I was thinking ‘are you sure you want me? But it has helped me massively and was so unreal.
“Playing games is huge. Games for a goalie are everything as it puts you on the map and puts you out there. Clubs look at what have they done and what experience you have, as clubs want a goalkeeper with experience and who knows what he is doing, which is why I am so grateful to be here and getting these games.
“And it is why I am always saying thanks and am so thankful to Exeter as they are helping me personally, so I will try my best to give it back. I am enjoying myself so much and getting games and playing, as before the first loan, there was nothing on.
“This loan means I can settle down and focus on the season and how I can help Exeter as much as I can. While all the other experiences on the emergency loans have been great to get games and boost my profile, this makes a massive difference to settle down and focus on the main objective of playing.”
As a teenage goalkeeper playing in English football, the mental strength to cope with the pressure is something that has got the better of several other players, but Andresson said that his sporting lineage has given him the edge over some of his contemporaries.
His father Andres Gudmundsson is a former winner of the World Strongman Challenge and was in 1999 Iceland’s Strongest Man, who is also 14th on the all-time list of Iceland’s discus throwers and in 1994 was ranked number 2 in the shot put.
Asked whether having a father who knows what it is like to compete at the highest level had helped him, the teenager said that his knowledge of the sporting world had given him a helping hand.
“He has given me massive strength on physical attributes and mental attributes,” he said. ”Me and my brothers were all together and bouncing off each other and finding out how we can help each other, but dad helped with everything that you have to put into the mental and physical attributes for the game.
“He has been a sportsman his whole life, a strongman, a boxer, a shot-putter, so he has always been helping me out with he can about my body and in the gym. To be honest, he doesn’t know a lot about football but he knows about the sports concept and how to live with it, deal with it, and he’s a harsh critic but does it in the best way possible. My mum is much more like ‘better luck next time’ and a shoulder to cry on and there is a nice balance between the two of them
“He has gone through so much in his career as a strongman and so much he learnt just by going around places, being everywhere and competing, and he knows about losing and how hard it is if you make a mistake, so if I make mistakes, he tells me everyone does it.
“Even though as a keeper are isolated and if you make nine worldies but makes a mistake in the last minute and lose the game, everyone is like ‘what are you doing’? So you have to be so tough and so mentally strong that you can deal with it and move on as you are going to make
CORNISH Pirates will kick off their Greene King Championship season on March 6 – and they couldn’t have been handed a tougher start with former Premiership and European champions Saracens heading to the Duchy.
The fixtures for the ‘2021’ Championship season were released on Monday and as long as there are no further coronavirus complications, Saracens – who were relegated from the Premiership last season because of financial irregularities – will be Pirates’ first opponents in the Conference A division, with the Championship split into two Conferences this season to deal with the late start.
For Pirates’ joint head coach Gavin Cattle, the first fixture will provide a ‘real test’.
“Everyone will have been checking when their team was due to play Saracens, so for us to have them first up is really exciting and at the same time presents a real test,” said Cattle.
“It will be all but 12 months since we last played a match, so getting back into the swing of playing after being out for so long, and with the required adherence to the Covid regulations, presents extra challenges.
“However, they are ones the boys and the coaching staff are very much looking forward to, as are all departments.
“Rugby is all about playing against different opposition and testing yourselves and, following this long lay-off, the boys have been craving the target of a start to the season which, with this news, is now very much another step nearer.”
He added: “Although it is shame that a crowd almost certainly won’t be there for our opener, let us all look forward to a time when supporters can return.
“In the meantime, understanding what goes on in and around that will be due to the bigger picture and rightfully the considered health of everyone during an unprecedented period.”