To be honest if it is a decent winter and you get no postponements you ought to be ok, players like playing and they will not mind midweek fixtures rather than training and if you get on a roll and a FA Cup run against league clubs your players will be on a high and it will not be a problem.

It's a long season and a lot of teams kick their heels midweek through February and March when they want to play games and as long as you do not get an injury crisis your players will love it.

Eastwood are one example of a team who reached the FA Cup 3rd round and got promoted to the Conference North last season, Burnley got to the Carling Cup semi's and the play offs and still went up, if your good enough it can be done.

only takes 1 or 2 games were things dont go right and defeats happen and the players want to hide themselves from the public for a week and then having to go out midweek with the confidence low and it could smowball from there.

in october though already being 5 games behind teams isnt something that the players or management would want at this early stage. in this league as well it wont take much during the winter months to have a few more called off especially away from the shay.

which may mean during a crucial part of the season late on we could have to play a huge amount of games like Durham had to last season and they nearlly blew promotion because of the amount of games they had to play.

we dont have the biggest squad and we have been lucky with injuries so far.

i'm happy at the minute cause we are winning but there is really no time to recover at the minute. it will be the same for some other clubs but we are playing 3 games in 8 days in the coming week. its going to be very difficult to keep going.

we are good enough yes is the answer to that one. whether we can do it is another.

Burnley didnt have to play presidents cup games and unibond league cup games and fa trophy games. these are part time players and they may have to play upwards of 5 games this season maybe even 60.

burnyley have full time professionals.

i'm not making excuses it just seems there are a lot of trophies at this level.

I agree on Burnley but Eastwood (much as I dislike them) had all the Unibond add on cups and if they can fluke their way to promotion (ok much as it pains me to say it the Championship) I think you can do so.

Just checked Eastwood had 59 first team games last season.

all said and done though i woldnt mind getting knocked out of these compeitions.

did Eastwood get far in those other compeitions such as the presidents cup or did they get knocked out in the first round or dont you know.

we can do it yes.

its abit like halifax rugby at the start of the season were unbeaten for a long time won the opening 7 games of the season and then lost and it all went wrong from there.

it only takes 1 defeat especially with games during the week as well theres no time for the manager to pick the confidence up before the next game.

well if they can do it then we can.

I will not argue that the Unibond do have too many competitions and a trimming down would not be a bad thing especially due to the fact you reach Conference North and you hardly play in any extra cups though I guess clubs want it as it is to raise extra revenue.

we create enough revenue from the gates at this level so we can do without the other competitions.

we play 1 of them tuesday night and to be honest i dont mind getting knocked out of it.

all i want to stay in is the fa cup the fa trophy and get promotion thats all that matters. the others i wouldnt mind losing.