Spennymoor Town are hoping that they won’t be punished by the league after their bus broke down and forced the postponement of their Vanarama National League North game at Boston on Saturday.

Their breakdown occurred on the A1 near Doncaster, and with a mechanic unable to resolve the problem, and the turnround time of a minibus offer from Boston deemed too time-consuming, then the referee decided to postpone the game.

A statement on the Spennymoor website said; “Spennymoor Town Football Club would like to apologise to the fans of both teams, officials, players and the management team at Boston United.

“Unfortunately, the team coach carrying the Spennymoor Town squad suffered a mechanical failure on the A1 while en route to Boston and was forced to pull over. After initially delaying kick off, the issue was unable to be resolved and sadly we ran out of time.

“The referee decided that the game should not go ahead when it became apparent that we could not reach The Jakemans Stadium in a reasonable time frame.”

A statement from manager Jason Ainsley and the rest of the management team said; “It is the priority of both teams, ourselves and Boston, to prepare our players as best we can so that they perform at their highest levels and represent their club and all associated with the club to the standard the supporters deserve. Because of this obligation, the decision was made to postpone the game.

“Boston kindly offered a minibus, but the coach had come to a stop approximately two hours from its final destination, meaning a minimum four-hour turnaround, most likely longer in heavy traffic which had already delayed our mechanic.

“We’d like to reiterate that this decision was made by the match referee with the full support of Spennymoor Town.

“Again we apologise for any inconvenience caused to anyone in regards to today’s fixture.”

Moors liaised with the league, Boston and the referee throughout the breakdown, and they’ll be hoping that given the circumstances, the league will take a lenient view of proceedings.

Boston manager Adam Murray was, not surprisingly, far from pleased, and said; “It’s very frustrating. I understand the break down of the bus is genuine, but from my point of view there are a lot of ways that it could have been got around.

“We offered to send a couple of mini buses to pick them up and, obviously, they’ve got the supporters’ coach. If they were getting another coach in to fix the broken one then I don’t see why the players couldn’t jump on the supporters’ coach and the supporters wait.

“If the bus is ok next time then they’ll have to come here on a Tuesday night. From that point it benefits us. But from what I read this morning, they had a couple of players take fitness tests and they may be fit for the next game. I feel sorry for the fans. I was really looking forward to today with the backing we got on Tuesday and being back at home again.”

Ainsley told the Northern Echo on Saturday that defender James Curtis was definitely out injured – he missed the game at FC United in midweek -- while midfielders Ryan Hall and Mark Anderson were both going to have fitness tests, but Graeme Armstrong was back in the squad after returning from holiday. Moors have 23 players registered with the league.

No new date has been seen yet for the re-arranged game, but the league will want to set a new date as soon as possible, which could mean a midweek trip in the near future.