CRAIG Edwards’ Billericay Town are keeping their fingers crossed that their Ryman Premier clash with Harrow Borough will be on tonight.

Edwards said: “The lads are chomping at the bit to play.

“It’s a frustrating time for all of us at the club.

“And the financial side of not playing is killing us too because there’s been no money coming in.

“But I’m lucky because I’ve got a good team and they are all mates too which is good for morale.”

Edwards is “cautiously optimistic” that the encounter will not fall by the wayside as the generally dry and windy conditions on Sunday and Monday had helped dry Town’s pitch a little.

But whether this was enough for the game to go ahead was unclear yesterday afternoon.

And Edwards admitted that he is tired of having to find other ways of keeping his team’s fitness up.

He said: “We trained on part of the pitch and then in the mud and most recently we went to Virgin Active and did some spinning, weights and boxing training.

He admitted that it was not ideal, but it has its advantages.

“That sort of training keeps the core fitness up but it still cannot make up for us only playing twice in January,” he said.

“Players lose a bit of their finesse on the ball and their match sharpness when they haven’t kicked a ball in a while.

“In our last match - against Hendon on January 21 – I thought we were half a yard off the pace at the start of the match because of theh lay-off.

“But by the end of 90 minutes our underlying core fitness was shining through and we finished stronger than them.”

“I’ve been trying to get us a 3G pitch to do some training, but they are all booked out,” he added.

However, optimist Edwards said that he was taking one major positive from the lay-off.

“Sometimes at this point in the season the players are getting mentally tired and a bit jaded.

“But the lay-off means that they are all raring to go.

“If the game against Harrow Borough was on spinning bikes I’d say that we would definitely win it, but it’s not.

“We go into it knowing that we drew with them 1-1 at their place on the first day of the season so we’ll be looking for a win. And I know we’ve got the fitness and the team spirit.”

He did however say that the team would probably still be without Chris Webber, who was making progress from his nasty ankle injury sustained in the Lewes match on December 7.

“Ordinarily you can test players who are coming back from injury by throwing them on for 15 minutes at the end of a match,” Edwards said. “But there’s been no chance to do this sort of testing this winter.”