Will the ‘Beast from the East’ prevent Thackley from playing their first game of March on Saturday? The Dennyboys are scheduled to visit Pickering and the recent wet weather, together with the forecast snow for the area, looks like making it three successive blank Saturdays’ for Thackley. Let’s hope not.

Pickering are one of four teams that have a realistic chance of becoming League Champions this season and winning that elusive promotion place. They are currently third in the table behind both Mansfield and Pontefract, trailing the top club by seven points but with two games in hand. Their last league defeat was back on the first Saturday of the year when Maltby came away from Mill Lane with all three points. Since then they have gone eight games without dropping any further points, their last victory just last Tuesday when they beat Albion Sports, five goals to one. They boast the league’s top scorer amongst their ranks; Ryan Blott has found the net on forty occasions this season, thirty nine of which have been in the league.

The Pikes have lost just once away from home in the league this season and that was the four two defeat at Dennyfield in October. Like Thackley, Pickering are one of the League’s founder members and have spent most of the time in the top division and so the two have met each other on numerous occasions. Games between the two are usually tight competitive affairs but last season Pickering took four points from Thackley, winning at Dennyfield and the scores remaining level in the game at Mill Lane.

Thackley have suffered badly from the weather so far this month, not managing to get any game time in the last three weeks. Their last competitive game was on the 24th February when they comprehensively beat Clipstone six nil. This followed the narrow home victory over Albion Sports. The new Management team of Pat McGuire, Mike Garrod and Joe Brown took over in mid January and since then Thackley have managed to play only five games. The positive is that from those five games they have only been beaten once and have picked up eight points to ease their relegations worries somewhat. The Dennyboys are still in need of points to pull away from the drop zone completely but Saturday’s game is likely to prove very difficult with Pickering being on top of the league’s form table.

As I write this preview, the rain is hammering down here and the forecast for snow has been confirmed, one can only hope that the weather men have got it wrong and Thackley finally get some game time in March.