Bardon Hill have issued an apology after they only had 7 players available for today's league match against title contenders Alvechurch, so were forced to postpone the match.
This is from the Bardon Hill OS:
The Committee and Management of Bardon Hill Football Club would like to issue the following statement regarding the cancellation of todays Midland Football League Premier Division game against Alvechurch FC.
We would like to unreservedly apologise to Alvechurch FC, the Committee and Board of the Midland Football League and the Member Clubs of the Premier Division for having to cancel todays fixture at short notice. We tried everything within our power to get enough players to enable us to play the fixture, but as of 11am this morning we only had seven players available, this total including team management.
We fully appreciate that situations like this should not occur at this level of football, but without making too many excuses, there are numerous reasons why this happened. We have operated as best we could with a very small squad of players for the last few months and for the last few games with only twelve or thirteen players, including the manager and committee members on the bench. We have been quite lucky with suspensions and serious injuries, but today with two players suspended and the hectic fixture schedule taking its toll with injuries etc and having no reserve or youth team too call upon, it became apparent this morning that we had no alternative other than to cancel the fixture.
We fully expect to be vilified for today in certain quarters and will have to accept our punishment, but we do hope that people understand that this decision was not taken lightly and that we will do our upmost to fulfil our remaining fixtures.