Northern Premier League play-off chasers Gainsborough Trinity haven’t featured at their own stadium in 22 days, with Morpeth Town on January 17 marking the last time they played at home.
Since the turn of the year, the Holy Blues have seen four games called off due to poor weather conditions.
Going a substantial period of time without playing a game at home can be detrimental to a non-league side like Trinity, as they don’t operate the bars or the clubhouse themselves, so all of their revenue is gate receipts and sponsorships.
This means the club can fall behind in its expected income, especially when factoring in paying the players wages – which they still have to do despite the lack of football being played.
Cancelled games are of course postponed, however this can still hurt the club’s revenue as if a Saturday game is rescheduled to a mid-week kick-off – their will be a drop off in the number of attending fans.
In fact, the number of fans at the KAL Group Stadium can half; with Gainsborough’s home attendance on a Saturday usually being between 500/600 compared to around 250/300 on a Tuesday.
Depending on who the side are playing and the sponsors they’re able to attract, the loss of income from a Saturday compared to a Tuesday game can be anywhere from £3,000 to a staggering £5,000.
Speaking to LincSport, Matt Boles, CEO of Gainsborough Trinity, said: “Having those games postponed causes us a serious headache, they have a serious knock on effect on cashflow because we set a budget and we know what we spend each year and we know what we bring in.
“So over the course of a season, we should be within budget but if we have a game postponed on a Saturday and it’s rearranged for a Tuesday, the revenue from that will literally be cut in half.
“We’ll probably have a full board of sponsors on a Saturday but on a Tuesday night we can’t get anybody to sponsor so we lose all of that revenue.”
The financial side isn’t the only negative effect of postponed games, with fixture congestion about to make life very difficult for Trinity manager Russ Wilcox and his players.
Gainsborough currently sit eighth in the league table on 40 points, with two games in hand on fifth place and a shocking four games in hand on Warrington Rylands – who currently occupy fourth.
They have eight fixtures arranged for the month of February, having played two already just over a week into the month, winning one and losing the other.
And from February 10, the Holy Blues will play twice a week (Tuesday and Saturday) until March 7 – barring any more postponements.
This causes a significant inconvenience for clubs like Trinity whose players have day jobs and need to finish work early in order to get to away days like Bamber Bridge on Tuesday – an 8pm kick-off that requires an two hour drive from Gainsborough.
Matt Boles said: “Sometimes it can help when you’ve got a lot of injuries like we have because it can give you that gap to get those players back in.
“But that means you know you’ve got a great big fixture backlog like we’re going to have in February/ March that the league aren’t going to help us out with and we’re now going to be playing Saturday, Tuesday all the way through which has the knock on effect further injuries and playing that often is just generally no good for the players.
“You hear Premier League managers moaning about how often they have to play but they’re not playing back to back Saturday/ Tuesdays while our lads also work.”
The league arguably should be doing more to help the clubs, as they employ a strict rule that means postponed games must be played within 35 days of the original fixture.
Matt Boles said: “The league don’t help the process, every now and again they could apply a bit of common sense.
“We’re trying to get the Hyde game rearranged to give everyone a but of a breather but they’re going to make us play it on March 3 so again we’re back-to-back Saturday, Tuesday’s.
They don’t help the situation because they tell us that their prerogative is just to get games in so there’s no backlog at the end of the season but we think player welfare and looking after our fans and players is more important.”