COVID restrictions have again reared their ugly heads in the Counties weekend football programme with Dover Athletics’ trip to Wealdstone being called off after the Whites management and squad all underwent COVID testing on Friday.

With the results not known until at least Saturday or even Monday, there was little choice for Andy Hessenthaler’s side to be inactive for the second successive Saturday.

As it was confirmed that their game was off, the Dover boss explained the position to KSN. “We’re waiting on results of the tests that we’ve had done on Friday,” Hessenthaler told us, “and if they come through that one of the guys are positive then we’re going to miss games again on Tuesday and then next weekend as well against Kings Lynn and with our game the following week already off as we’re due to play Boreham Wood – who are still in the Cup!

“Hopefully, everyone will come back clear otherwise it could be the start of December before we play again but everything does come back negative, we’ll be back on Tuesday against Woking.”

“It just seems so strange that at this stage of the season where we are that we’ve only played seven League games where normally we’d have up to fifteen games or more. It was obviously disrupted last year as we didn’t finish the season and to be fair, we’ve got under way later than usual, but it really doesn’t feel the same.

“Until the pandemic gets sorted whether it’s a vaccine that sorts it – hopefully that will be the case – but until we get fans back through the gates, its never going to feel the same and hopefully that can change soon and we can get back to something like normality in life in general.”

“It’s been frustrating as we lost the last game we played against Altrincham which was disappointing as we’d got a good result against Eastleigh and a good performance at Yeovil in the FA Cup where a very young team we lost on penalties – I was proud of them the way they showed their character.

“When you lose a game you just want to play the next one quite quickly to put that one to bed, it is almost like we’re going to have to start again, but I think that its going to happen a lot this season as theres a lot of disruption but you just have to look at other teams are having games called off because of COVID, I think it will happen quite a lot as its going to be a disruptive season again!”

As if to back that up, including Dover’s game at Wealdstone, is one of four games that have been called off this weekend because of COVID restrictions.

There has been a lot said and written that players suffer because of the stop start nature of this troubled season, but of managers? We asked the Dover boss and he admitted, “There is so much disruption, it’s really tough! Nothings settled – we’ve been unfortunate with injuries as well meaning our teams been unsettled – it is tough as it’s hard to get going; you want that bit of momentum really and its tough to get really organised.

“You just feel that it’s a real strange season this one – we haven’t got off to a good start and we’ve had our battles during the summer as everyone knows – everything just seems disjointed as it doesn’t seem like a “normal” season… again!”