THE WITTON COLUMN - By Paul Harper

YOU’LL have read a lot about Storm Dennis in the past week or so, so I apologise as you’re about to read even more about it as it ruined our weekend!

Waking up on Saturday morning, we always have the football to look forward to, and last weekend was no different. Albion set to make the journey to the picturesque destination of Matlock Town for a BetVictor Northern Premier League fixture, all was well in the world.

Then I received the ominous text message from the secretary: “Pitch inspection at 11am”.

For me, looking after the club’s social media, that means posting an update to inform the supporters as to what’s going on, before anxiously awaiting the second text message.

I had both scenarios planned and both the thumbs up and thumbs down emojis lined up and ready to go for either potential message.

At about 11.05am, my phone beeps with the message: “Todays game has been postponed.”

This frustrates me in two ways. Firstly, the game is off, meaning no football fix this Saturday afternoon, never a good thing. And secondly, the lack of an apostrophe between today and the s!

So, with no football to attend and report on, what else could I do with my day? Well, I ended up at my four-year-old nephew’s birthday party which was nice.

It can’t be a completely nice football-free Saturday though, can it? No, I then got dragged around a hideously busy Trafford Centre!

Storm Dennis, you have a lot to answer for!

It wasn’t just the first team that was affected this weekend by the bad weather either, the youth team’s fixture against St Helens Town on Sunday had to be postponed too because of a waterlogged pitch.

So, zero football to talk about from last weekend unfortunately.

In addition, our scheduled Mid-Cheshire Senior Cup semi-final against 1874 Northwich on Tuesday was postponed, indirectly because of Dennis.

Our opponents’ League Cup tie on Saturday was called off and rearranged for midweek, so Albion didn’t even have a midweek fixture to look forward to!

After Storms Ciara and Dennis in the past couple of weeks, hopefully we don’t have another weekly storm this week, as we’re on the road to take on Stalybridge Celtic on Saturday.

With a baker’s dozen league games to go, Witton will be looking to rise to the challenge this weekend and get an important three points to keep us in the race for a top five finish come the end of the season. UTA!