NEW Year fixture chaos is looming for football clubs in York and North and East Yorkshire.

Only one match has been played in the York Minster Engineering League since Saturday, November 20, while the York FA Cup fixtures are two rounds behind schedule and the York Sunday Morning League has been badly hit.

Officials at Ryedale’s newitts.com Beckett League are also reeling from their first December fixture wipe-out for more than 40 years.

With County Cups and local FA Cups taking precedence over league games, fixture secretaries are already facing the prospect of an end-of-season pile-up.

York Minster Engineering League fixture secretary Colin Atkinson said League Cup competitions may have to be scrapped to accommodate games postponed in November and December.

“We reduced the size of our divisions over the summer, so that is helping us a bit,” said Atkinson.

“However, we are starting to look at evening games at the end of the season already.

“We’ve not started the League Cup games, so we will have to make a decision on whether to play that at the end of the season, in the evenings or abandon it entirely.

“There is no major crisis at the moment, if you forget the League Cup. Every time games are off I reschedule them and there are one or two evening games at the moment.

“I had three Saturdays in March and early April set aside for the League Cup and I am having to put league games into those Saturdays now.

“I can’t remember anything like this so early in the season. In 2000, it was very wet and we had flooding problems for a time in November, but nothing like this.”

The next two Saturdays are blank – covering Christmas Day and New Year’s Day – and the football season resumes on January 8.

That date has now been set aside for York FA Cup games delayed from November 27 and there is the prospect of further disruption from the weather throughout January.

Atkinson added: “We will have to wait and see what happens.

“The last two scheduled rounds of the York FA Cups have not been played and they take precedence.

“And we have a couple of teams – Amotherby and Church Fenton – in county cups, and they take precedence over everything.”

Bob Grainger, York FA secretary, has been shuffling second round cup ties back on a week-by-week basis since the cold snap descended at the end of November.

He said: “Last year was pretty bad with the weather, but we’ve not had anything like this so early as far as I can remember. We always have the FA Cup matches before Christmas to get them out of the way before the weather gets bad.

“The league secretaries must be tearing their hair out because the FA Cups take precedence over their matches, and even then the County Cups come before our ties.”

Meanwhile, Beckett League organisers are fearing severe fixture congestion at the end of the season after a fourth successive weekend whiteout.

League secretary Keith Sales said the backlog of matches was worrying. “Both the first and second divisions have as yet not got half way through their league fixtures, and a few cup games are behind schedule,” he said.

“It is to be hoped we can get going again on Saturday, January 8, otherwise there will be severe problems at the end of the season.”