An unscheduled weekend off allowed Micky Mellon to put his squad through their paces on the playable part of the Boundary Park pitch on Saturday, writes Simon Mather.

In the long run, losing this game to the weather may not be a bad thing as the squad will likely be in a stronger place by the time we play Boreham Wood at some point in the next few months.

In the short term, it was of course disappointing to not play the game but we can’t help the weather. I was already at Boundary Park and in Ice Station Zebra when the final announcement came at 1.30pm to postpone the game, seemingly due to some of the players expressing doubts over their safety.

Safety of course has to be a priority so I have no issue if that was the case; the last thing we want to see is players getting injured due to the playing surface, especially ours which is state of the art and still virtually brand new.

In fact, I have no real issue with anything that occurred at weekend.

The ground staff did an absolutely sterling job at trying to get the game on and we can ask of them no more. Indeed, we should be very grateful for the efforts of Dean Pickering and his staff in going way above and beyond looking after the pitch, despite the freezing temperatures they were contending with.

Personally, I would much rather we give the game every chance, and it clearly had a chance or the referee would have called it off at either 9am or 11am, than call it off early and then find the pitch playable by 3pm.

The postponement extends our break from league action to a fortnight as we make our first foray into this season’s FA Trophy next Saturday.

Our first ever Trophy campaign was a damp squib last season scraping through the third round before being taken apart by Gateshead on a freezing January Saturday in the fourth. I do hope that isn’t the case this season.

We have been given a good tie at home, a game which we should of course win due to our opponents, Mickleover, being so much lower than us in the pyramid.

However, I hope we don’t take victory for granted, put out our strongest side and make a real go at getting Trophy success this season.

All Oldham fans crave a trophy and of course we would all like that to be promotion but, at this stage of the season, especially while we are only flirting with the play-offs rather than firmly ensconced in them, there is no reason at all why we shouldn’t push for a good run, hopefully all the way, in the FA Trophy.