Covid-hit Horsham determined to play fixtures

Dominic Di Paola said Horsham are determined to fulfill as many fixtures as they can despite a spate of positive Covid cases at the club.
Dominic Di Paola said Horsham are determined to fulfill as many fixtures as they can despite a spate of positive Covid cases at the club. Picture by Steve RobardsDominic Di Paola said Horsham are determined to fulfill as many fixtures as they can despite a spate of positive Covid cases at the club. Picture by Steve Robards
Dominic Di Paola said Horsham are determined to fulfill as many fixtures as they can despite a spate of positive Covid cases at the club. Picture by Steve Robards

Last Saturday’s trip to Hornchurch in the Isthmian Premier was called off following a Covid outbreak among the Hornets’ squad.

A statement on Horsham’s website said at least seven players had tested positive, as well as a number of club personnel.

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This left the Hornets with just 12 fit players, ultimately leading to the games’ postponement.

With cases of the highly-transmittable Omicron variant on the rise, there have been calls from some, including Crawley Town manager John Yems, to pause the season for two weeks to alleviate the crisis.

But Di Paola wanted the Isthmian League to persevere so teams could avoid a fixture pile up or, worse, a third consecutive curtailed campaign.

He said: "We’ll always try to honour a fixture. The boys want to play.

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"We’ve just had this relentless run of games and now we’re looking at January and February being the same. We’ve got Hornchurch to fit in and we’ve got Saltdean in the quarter-finals of the Senior Cup.

"We’re now going to have two months of hoping we come out of the woods and we’re not playing so many games.

"I’d rather get games played. We have to respect and expect clubs to maybe pull out.

"If we had three players missing we would have played the game. We just want to play games.

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"I don’t want to have to go up to Hornchurch on a Tuesday night. I can’t think of anything worse. Nothing against Hornchurch, but it’s a long trip and on a Saturday it’s a much easier run.

"I feel like it’s another tricky tie we’ve got to play midweek, so if we had two or three out we would’ve just played the game. We just physically couldn’t get a team out.

"I think all of us should just play when we can. If clubs are struggling and they’ve got a lot of cases then we have to apply some common sense.

"We want to get games played and we want to get this season finished because of what has happened the previous two years.

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"You take two weeks off then miss four games, and then you’ve got to bolt them in [somewhere]. That’s not factoring in postponements in the New Year because of the weather."

Horsham are due to welcome Lewes on Monday, December 27, but Di Paola admitted that Covid had seriously affected the Hornets’ preparations.

He added: "We’re waiting and seeing because we’ve got a number of players that will have been out of isolation. As long as they don’t have any reactions to it they should be okay.

"But it’s really hard to tell at the moment. We’re just going to try and get this week out of the way.

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"We’ve not trained. None of the boys have kicked a ball since the Hastings game, so by the time we come to play Lewes there will have been quite a substantial break.

"But there’s nothing we can do. We’re talking about maybe training on Thursday but we’re only going to have five, maybe six players there.

"We’re thinking it might be worth doing a little something that day with just a few players to blow the cobwebs out. Hopefully by the Monday you might be all right.

"The only problem we have is that the boys socialise quite a bit as a group. They’re quite close as a group but that doesn’t help because they’re out and about doing stuff as a group."

Horsham have been drawn at home to Saltdean in the Sussex Senior Cup quarter-finals. The tie must be played no later than January 19.

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