Notts County told they must play Dagenham fixture amid crisis despite National League request

Head coach Ian Burchnall has revealed that injury and illness-ravaged Notts County’s request to postpone Tuesday’s match at Stockport County was turned down by the Vanarama National League.

And he confirmed that the league have also told Notts they must play Saturday's fixture at Dagenham & Redbridge, despite there being few signs of improvement in the health of many of their players, several of whom were physically sick during and after the 3-0 defeat at Edgeley Park. Immediately after Tuesday’s defeat an emotional and angry Burchnall refused to criticise his players for their performance, confirming that many of them were not fit to play and that the squad was so threadbare that they had considered fielding assistant coach Michael Doyle and moving main striker Kyle Wootton to centre-back, while also looking at recalling on-loan Lewis Knight to make up the numbers.

“We placed a request for the Stockport and Dagenham games to be postponed based on the number of players we had who were unavailable, either through illness, sickness or injury,” said Burchnall. “We were down to 12 players training on Monday but the league regulations state that if we had 11 players available, and that included those we could recall from loans and Doyle, who is registered as a player and counted in that cohort, we met the criteria for the game to go ahead.

“But the reality was that we didn't have one fit, well defender. We had conversations on Monday about what to do if they were all too unwell to play and we were talking about Wootton or Matty Palmer playing in central defence!”

Despite Notts’ woes, Burchnall was full of praise for a Stockport side who are now seven points clear at the top of the league and favourites to secure the one