Cup precedence frustrates Gregg

Stute will now face Banbridge at the Riverside this Saturday with their league trip to the Welders postponed to an unconfirmed future date, much to the Gregg's frustration.

"This is a crazy rule I can't think of anywhere else in the world where cup games take precedence of league games. We are on decent run at the minute and the league is the big priority. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the Intermediate Cup, it's an important comeptition but in my book the league comes first. To have a situation where league games are shifted around at a week's notice to accomodate cup matches is crazy. I don't see why a midweek date could not have been found for the Banbridge game some time in the next couple of weeks.

"When you start messing with the league programme you can end up with a big backlog of matches at the end of the season. I think Loughgall had to play something like five games in the space of 10 days at the end of last year, which is ridiculous," he said.

Although he knows the postponement of the Banbridge game was unavoidable amid last weekend's arctic weather, Gregg was still frustrated at seeing his side miss out on playing a match just when he feels they have built up a bit of momentum.

"It might have been our third game against the same opponents in as many weeks but I was looking forward to last Saturday's match. We have been on a decent run I would liked to have seen that continue. This has been a new team we've put together this season and they are just starting to gel and we want to maintain that process," he said.

And Gregg is also concerned that a sustained run of bad weather could lead to a situation like last season where his side went for weeks without a competitive games in January.

"There was spell last season where we had game after game called off which severly disrupted our season. I'm really hoping that that doesn't occur again this season. But we've now had one game off before the end of November and you look at the weather this week and you start to worry whether there will be many games played this Saturday either," he said.

Assuming the cup clash with Banbridge does go ahead this weekend, Gregg will again be without injured trio, Vincent Sweeney, Declan Divin and Conor Lynch although there is a possibility that defensive duo Ryan Brown and Graeme Crown could both return to action.

Meanwhile the Riverside Stadium supremo is looking forward to welcoming Newington to Drumahoe in the Fourth Round of the Irish Cup on Saturday December 11(kick off 3pm).

"The main thing from the Irish Cup draw is that we have got a home draw. We would love to make it to the Fifth Round where all the Premiership teams come into the draw but can't afford to take Newington lightly. We are expecting a tough game," he said.