By Brian Bennett

Ashington FC manager Ian Skinner spoke at the weekend of his to Ebac Northern League outfit Heaton Stannington – and the ENL – after the Colliers clash at Grounsell Park scheduled for Wednesday (October 12) was postponed by mutual consent.

The reason behind the move was to give the Wansbeck side a free week to prepare for their massive fourth qualifying round tie in the Emirates FA Cup against Kings Lynn on Saturday in Norfolk.

Skinner was quick to praise both parties: “It’s nice that a fellow member club of the Northern League has been kind enough to reschedule their fixture list in order to help us out and it’s also nice that the ENL have agreed to it – given that we are the last representatives of the league in the FA Cup competition. It’s a great gesture and one which we welcome and we thank them for because there would have been nothing worse than having to play that game on Wednesday. Heaton Stannington could rightly have said that they wanted the clash to go ahead knowing that we wouldn’t really want to try and risk too many players or pick up any injuries.”