Market Drayton Town must be restored to Shropshire’s premier competition, the Senior Cup, next season - that’s the remarkable plea yesterday from a Wem Town official currently fighting tooth and nail to get them kicked out of this year’s Challenge Cup semi-final.
Wem’s club secretary, Cyril Pritchard, says he would even consider backing a county-wide boycott of the Challenge Cup next season to promote Drayton’s case.
For he believes a return to traditional county competition battle lines is vital to head off a repeat of the row currently raging over his club calling off Tuesday night’s Challenge Cup quarter-final tie at Drayton.
Wem claim the Shropshire FA broke their own rules arranging the game midweek and have appealed to the English FA against Drayton going through to the Challenge Cup’s last four draw, along with Ellesmere Rangers, Shifnal and Wellington Amateurs.
“It’s a ludicrous situation because everyone knew from the start that we couldn’t play midweek,” said the Wem official.
“We’ve nothing against Drayton. We’d expect to lose to them anyway so our complaint is to prove a point . . . this whole issue has come about because Drayton should really be in the county’s top competition.
“This problem has been caused by the Shropshire FA arbitrarily downgrading the likes of Drayton and Shifnal to the Challenge Cup, making the Senior Cup a contest between just Telford and Shrewsbury.
“Apart from the finalists, virtually everyone in Shropshire football was against it.”
The, whole issue, triggered when the original Saturday tie was frozen off, is convoluted, involving conflicting rules in national, county and various league handbooks, agrivated even more by the weather.
And Drayton earlier in the season had such fixture-congestion they actually withdrew from the competition - before being reinstated.
That pattern is set for Drayton when they return to league action at Greenfields tomorrow (3pm) against Rushall Olympic followed by what could be a real goal fest against struggling Willenhall on Tuesday.
Manager Andy Pryce, buoyed by his side’s fine battling 1-1 draw at Leek Town on Saturday, is upbeat about the rest of the season.
“Amid all the problems we’ve had, people tend to overlook the fact that we are still only seven points off the top of the table and just four from the playoffs.” he said.
“We’ll have Stuart Ellis back on Saturday and that will be a big bonus for he’s popular off the field as well as on it, and the lads are really geared up for the game.
“I thought everyone did tremendously well at Leek. The squad have been working very hard and only problem coach Mick Murphy and I have at the moment is deciding who to leave out.
“But that’s a much better situation than we were in a while back, when we were wondering who we could find to bring in.”
Town’s trip to Leek was marked by a cracking second half performance in which stand-in centre-forward Paul Bowyer grabbed a 60th minute equaliser.
