Rusty Dorchester Reserves eager to beat the weather (From Dorset Echo)

Rusty Dorchester Reserves eager to beat the weather

9:20am Thursday 24th January 2013 in Football By David Williams, Sports Reporter

DORCHESTER Town Reserves will try to play only their third league game in three months tonight when they visit Winchester City (7.45pm).

While the rain and snow has decimated the Magpies’ fixture list since the end of October their opponents have managed to fit in 10 matches during the same period.

Dorchester’s inactivity has seen them slip to 10th out of the 12 clubs in the Wyvern Comb-ination League as Winchester have made the most of their good fortune to lie second before last night’s games.

They are in good form too having gone six without defeat and won their last two against AFC Totton and Bashley. The Mag-pies’ last outing was a 3-2 defeat at Wimborne Town.

Dorchester’s lack of game time could have a knock-on effect for Magpies’ first-team boss Phil Simkin, who is likely to be dipping into the reserves during his side’s hectic fixture schedule.

Calling on players without much, or any, first-team experience is one risk but a lack of match sharpness on top of that is another thing.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do about this,” said reserve manager Dave Kiteley when commenting on the endless postponements.

“We are supposed to finish our fixtures by the end of April but I can’t see that happening.

“It’s just a depressing situation and the only thing we can do is train.

“But that gets monotonous because we can’t do anything outside as the grass is too wet.

“I’ve never known anything like it and there’s nothing we can do about it.

“We are just trying to keep the lads interested and I’m finding it very difficult to keep myself interested too.

“It’s almost like being on a summer break apart from the weather. At a time like this it’s very easy to switch off a bit.

“Some of the lads play in the Dorset Premier League but they haven’t had games either so at this rate we’ll still be playing in June.”

Magpies (from): Matthews, Beals, Evans, Shingler, Diment, Shackle-ford, Butcher, Bell, Andrews, God-frey, Twyford, Taylor, Gape, Peart, Brooks, Way