Lloyd Blackman has been reflecting on the Bet Victor South East season being cut short and being left in a certain degree of limbo before Easter!

The Whitstable Town boss told KSN, “It does all seem a little bit odd that we’re beginning to think of next season from when the plug was pulled in mid-March which meant the season was over before Easter!”

“That’s our aim now to try and treat it like the “normal” end of the season and we are expecting to go back in for the first of July-ish for pre-season. But I think that there’s no-one who really knows what is going on at the moment, so it’s almost taking week to week until we understand how life in general is moving forward!”

“Football’s kind of taken a back seat at the moment as there’s not a lot that we can do – the players are all aware of that – it’s just a very strange situation to be quite honest!”

“It’s not even as if we can prepare next season by talking to players now – it certainly is an issue! I’ve only been managing for three or four years so there may be better people to ask that have been in situations that is different if that makes sense.”

“But for me, it’s unprecedented and how does everyone deal with it? And to be perfectly honest, the people I’ve spoken to, they’re the same!”

“When you speak to Neil Cugley, even he admits that they’ve never been in this situation before and so we’re all kind of a bit unsure and what I mean by that is that we have no “official” news from the League regarding the admin side of how we approach things – all I’m able to do is to speak to my players and tell them what we’re up against and what the situation currently is and to be honest I think we’re the same as any other club.”

“We’re unsure about how to deal with this at the moment because we don’t know the financial ramifications that it will leave on football clubs, on people in general, in life, and I think it’s a really, really strange time.”

“The players are no different, the managers are no different, and the Football Club is absolutely no different – we can just be honest and say right, let’s hopefully see how things settle down and when they settle down we can move on from there, because at the moment we’re in a position of unknown!”

Blackman then paid tribute to those who are keeping the Club going at its’ lower levels – he said, “It’s an amazing group of people volunteering who are doing everything they can to make sure that all the youth players and the Community itself doesn’t suffer – there’s a lot of little schemes that the Club are trying to do to make sure that we stay active and we stay positive and we’re able to help out where we can.”

“We’re having to think outside the box because we’re being told to stay indoors all day and we can’t go up to the local park for a kick-a-bout! It’s the little things that we can try and do together to help them stay active and do our bit, but it is certainly tough times!” 

Blackman continued, “I had a call from my Secretary the other day as we were whinging a couple of weeks ago about how many games were getting called off and we jokingly said now that after this, we’ll never moan again as it’s part and parcel of football now as we’re sitting around before Easter unsure of when we’re going to restart – kind of put things back into perspective really, that we really have no right to moan as one game was called off because of a bit of rain – I’m never going to be moaning about games being rained off again!”

There have been calls for the authorities to help the lower Clubs financially but Blackman’s still not sure.

“I think we’re all hoping that we might get some funding of some kind from the FA,” he admitted.

“The honest answer is that we really don’t know. At Whitstable, we’re a Limited Company which we changed to last year and I think that that may allow us to get something back through the “furlough scheme”. There’s positives at the Club as speaking to the Chairman in the form of funding and pay-back or investment from the Government.”

“But again I think that as I said, we’re all very much in a waiting game as we watch and listen to on the TV, but that said, we haven’t reached half of what has been talked about yet!”

“We don’t know – we’re waiting and seeing and I think that’s the unknown – situations that we’ve never been in before – we’re all apprehensive whilst trying to remain positive by doing our bit, but it’s the unknown situation that for me remains the scary part!”