Breedon Highland League secretary John Campbell is bracing himself for a weekend wipeout due to wintery weather.
The plunge in temperature and snowfall across the north of Scotland mean Saturday’s nine-game Highland League card is likely to be decimated.
Although Campbell remains hopeful some games could beat the weather, he admits the forecast makes for grim reading.
He said: “It’s not looking great in terms of getting games played. The weather forecast indicated we were going to get really hard frost and snow for eight to 10 days.
“If we’ve got that hard frost, we’ll pretty much see the weekend wiped out.
“I had hoped coastal areas might stay clear of the frost, but the information I’ve got at the moment is not good.
“Buckie, for example, was under snow yesterday, and if that freezes there will be further complications.
“Looking at the fixtures for this weekend, I’m not holding out much hope.
“The majority of them are inland as well, which probably makes the chances of them being on even less likely.
“A lot of places were around about -10 or -12 on Monday night into Tuesday and it’s not much better during the day.
“If it remains like that into Thursday, I think we’ll be looking at pitch inspections on Friday evening.
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed, because usually in coastal areas the thaw is pretty quick – but it will depend whether or not it’s quick enough.
“Once frost sets in, it’s very hard to get it to thaw out.”
‘It’s been pretty good’
Last weekend six games were postponed, but Campbell hasn’t had too many problems to deal with previously in terms of rearranging fixtures.
He added: “Up until last weekend it had been pretty good in terms of getting games played.
“Prior to Saturday we’d only lost 28 games and the majority of them were due to cup fixtures – and 14 of them had been rearranged.
“So prior to Saturday we only had 14 games outstanding, but obviously there was another six added to that on Saturday, and I’d expect the number to increase again this weekend.”
