By Brian Bennett

Ashington FC manager Ian Skinner shrugged his shoulders as he acknowledged that the weather had scuppered back to back away games for his side last week in the Ebac Northern League’s first division.

The Colliers clash at Whickham on Tuesday fell foul of a waterlogged surface at the Glebe following heavy rain whilst Saturday’s trip to face Redcar Athletic was called off at noon due to a frost affected pitch.

Skinner said: “Obviously there’s a disruption now with the weather and that always happens throughout the season so it’s about making sure we still manage to train even though games are being called off. It’ll give us an opportunity to get one or two players back and it’ll be a week by week situation with the aim of training hard and preparing properly to win whichever games we are faced with in that week.”

Like the postponement at Whickham, Saturday’s thumbs down decision on Teesside left Skinner frustrated: “We want to play,” he added, “We want to put this little run of indifferent results right and want to get back on the winning trail – and the sooner we do that the better because it just calms everybody down. Obviously we’ve had such a positive start to the season and now that we’ve had two defeats and a draw from three games, people are just getting a little bit twitchy. We were always going to have some bumps in the road but as I said only last week, it’s about putting the season into perspective. We’ve just got to keep believing in the process and what it is that we are trying to achieve and how we are trying to achieve it. We’ll come through this little blip but the only way we can do that is by playing matches – and at the moment we are in the hands of the weather.”

Meanwhile Skinner’s squad had time to relax on Saturday: “It was too late to be able to organise anything after the Redcar game was cancelled so I gave the lads the day off,” he added.

On Saturday (December 17), Ashington are at home to Carlisle City (3pm).