Head coach Ian Burchnall has revealed that injury and illness-ravaged Notts County’s request to postpone Tuesday’s match at Stockport County was turned down by the Vanarama National League.
And he confirmed that the league have also told Notts they must play Saturday's fixture at Dagenham & Redbridge, despite there being few signs of improvement in the health of many of their players, several of whom were physically sick during and after the 3-0 defeat at Edgeley Park. Immediately after Tuesday’s defeat an emotional and angry Burchnall refused to criticise his players for their performance, confirming that many of them were not fit to play and that the squad was so threadbare that they had considered fielding assistant coach Michael Doyle and moving main striker Kyle Wootton to centre-back, while also looking at recalling on-loan Lewis Knight to make up the numbers.
“We placed a request for the Stockport and Dagenham games to be postponed based on the number of players we had who were unavailable, either through illness, sickness or injury,” said Burchnall. “We were down to 12 players training on Monday but the league regulations state that if we had 11 players available, and that included those we could recall from loans and Doyle, who is registered as a player and counted in that cohort, we met the criteria for the game to go ahead.
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“But the reality was that we didn't have one fit, well defender. We had conversations on Monday about what to do if they were all too unwell to play and we were talking about Wootton or Matty Palmer playing in central defence!”
Despite Notts’ woes, Burchnall was full of praise for a Stockport side who are now seven points clear at the top of the league and favourites to secure the one automatic promotion place. “I have to stress that Stockport were absolutely outstanding, comfortably the best team in the league I have seen, and you want to go there with your full complement to give yourself the best possible opportunity,” he said.
“As good as Stockport were I knew we were up against it. We sent in the postponement request and it was rejected. We then had the decision to make: do we try to get these players through this game and see if we can dig a result out, or play Doyle and recall Knight, as our other player on loan, Tyreace Palmer, is currently unavailable
“It was a case of playing a very odd looking team of those who were fit, with the likes of Wootton and Palmer in defence, or asking some of those who were ill to play. Of course it made it a challenging game and all the harder because Stockport were so good. It’s been a very difficult 48 hours, with the decisions we have had to make, but the players really dug in and gave everything they had against a very good team and I admire them for that.”
Burchnall said that Notts could have refused to play but that would have meant forfeiting the game. “We didn’t think that was the right thing to do,” he said. “We did the best with the hand we had and the really important thing is that we try to recover everyone as best we can for the weekend.”
Asked if it was fair that in a professional league games should go ahead if a team has the bare 11 available, Burchnall said: “It’s strange, because if we had made this request six weeks ago, the game would never go ahead. We had games called off earlier in the season but I made it clear then that we will do everything we can to play, and we did. We had Wrexham at home, when we had only two fit, healthy subs on the bench, but we were prepared to do everything we could to play the game, despite many saying we should call it off.
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“We didn’t, and we have done that the whole way through. The club has continued with the protocols to keep everyone as healthy as possible but I felt at the start of this week we were really struggling and we looked for some support in that and we didn’t get it.
"Four to six weeks ago there is no question that game would be off. I’m not taking anything away from Stockport, but I think it is important to let people know where we were at this week.”
Prior to the government’s recent removal of all Covid restrictions, the National League followed Football League guidelines that clubs had to be able to have 11 players and three subs available for games to go ahead, and Burchnall feels that should still be the case.
“I think the league should have reviewed the situation and made a sensible decision but they didn’t. We can only put forward all the evidence of what has happened internally and they should know that it’s the first time we have asked for anything this season.
"This was genuinely a problem for us, we put it forward but it was knocked straight back. It would make sense to stay with the old rule but we don’t control that. We have been as frank and open as possible but we didn’t feel we got what we needed.”
There was some good news for Notts fans, with Richard Brindley and long-term absentee Jim O’Brien back in training. “We may have some extra bodies back for the weekend, which will be a massive boost,” said Burchnall.
