Whether you are a player or a manager, when Saturday comes all you want to do is to be involved in a game.
So you can imagine how everyone at the club felt when the Chester match was called off late on Friday afternoon. Deflated is putting it mildly.
I would go so far as to say it was one of the most depressing weekends I’ve ever spent in the game and I suspect that if you took a straw poll the players would agree wholeheartedly.
For a player, there is nothing worse than building yourself up all week and then finding that there is no game at the end of it.
Now I’m not going to get involved in pointing an accusing finger at anyone over what happened. That’s not my department. Generators I know nothing about. Generating team spirit, then that’s an entirely different matter.
Which was one of the reasons why we went training on the beach on Saturday to keep ourselves ticking over. But there are no prizes for guessing what the mood in the camp was.
Although I believe the spirit is pretty good, and the boys are determined to turn things around, everyone was a little bit down. We were up for the game against Chester, make no mistake about that, so it’s very frustrating for all concerned, fans as well, when you discover there is no game.
No-one was more frustrated than our new signing Matthew Bound. He would have made his debut and like any player with a new club he was really looking forward to a taste of League action again after so long in the Stockport reserves.
In the normal course of events, he would have had to wait until Saturday’s trip to Shrewsbury for his first outing with us but the hurriedly-arranged game at Chester tonight gives him a chance to show what he can do.
Not that he has to convince either Ian Branfoot or myself. We both know that his experience and physical presence will stiffen our defence.
Those defeats against Peterborough and Scarborough showed that we are conceding too many goals. Until those matches I was trying to convince myself that we were showing signs of improvement at the back, but deep down I knew we really needed more experience.
Matthew will certainly help to shore things up and he will be quite a threat at our set-pieces as well, so I’ll be expecting to see a few goals.
By the time we face Shrewsbury we may have one or two more players in the squad. That is certainly my aim.
Ian and I had planned to reverse our roles for a few days this week to allow him do some coaching and to give me the chance to see more matches.
It seemed an ideal opportunity with no midweek game scheduled to get out and about, but playing Chester tonight changed the plans. I did see a couple of games last week after our visit to Scarborough, but I did not really see anything that excited me.
What am I looking for? Well, it’s no secret that the clubs who went up from this division last season, Carlisle, Wigan, Northampton and my old club Fulham were big and strong and very experienced with the majority of players in the 26, 27, 28 and 29 age group.
It has not taken me five weeks as a manager to discover that. I knew that before. What I have discovered is that there are a lot of other things to learn in what so far has been an enjoyable experience.
My biggest problem so far has been with the Press and probably a lot of it is my fault. I’ve been a little naïve in my dealings with the media, but I’II get there in the end and repair a few bridges along the way.