THE atrocious weather over the festive period means St Helens Town have not kicked a ball for three weeks.

But, hopefully, the elements will relent for them to let in the New Year with an attractive home fixture against Mossley which kicks off at 3pm this Saturday at Hoghton Road.

In the event of the bad weather continuing spectators are asked to ring the club information line on 817225 from noon on Saturday.

Apart from the Middlewich v Formby division two game last Saturday's entire North West Counties League programme was wiped out by storms and flooding.

And it meant Towns crunch 'six-pointer' at third placed Kidsgrove was put on hold. Currently Jimmy McBride's boys are in fifth place with 35 points from 19 games. But they have five games in hand on leaders Newcastle Town and three in hand on second placed Vauxhall GM.

Indeed the Ellesmere Port outfit have yet to meet Town this season and with third placed Kidsgrove also to be faced twice, Town can make serious inroads on the title race with the right results. Completing the top quintet are fourth placed Burscough who have made a positive surge of late allied to FA Vase progress and with Town still to visit the Linnets, a feast of non-league football awaits over the next couple of months. In reviewing the season so far perhaps Town's biggest disappointment was FA Vase elimination at Tow Law of County Durham, where they were cruelly denied a 'winner' before going down 2-1 in extra time. A crumb of comfort however is that Tow Law are still going strong but it could just have easily have been St Helens Town if fate had been kinder on the day.

Even so, Town are still involved in two cup competitions notably the NWCL floodlit trophy and the Liverpool Senior Cup with home draws in both. In the former, Bootle are the quarter final opponents on Wednesday January 28 at 7.30 while Warrington Town provide the opposition in the latter on an evening date to be confirmed.

Town's Steve Pennington is hot on the heels of league leading goalscorer Robbie Cowley of Burscough and Pellet's 26 goals so far have set him on course to break the St Helens club record held by Mervyn Bull in 1974 with 47.

With Stuart Phoenix's return imminent and Aidie Reilly's not too far away Jimmy McBride should shortly have a full squad but disruption is likely once more with suspensions due to raise their head but adequate cover should be available over this crucial period.

Last week's lottery numbers 4,5,6,7,12,13 (no winners). This week £1,060 on numbers 1-13.

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