BURNHAM saw their home fixture with Royal Wootton Bassett called off an hour before the scheduled kick-off despite having been passed fit earlier on Saturday.

Although rain had left a few areas of water on the pitch, there seemed no problem when the The Gore was independently inspected at around 12.30pm.

Both the referees’ assistants appeared happy with it, as were the visiting team, but the match referee thought differently and called it off at 2pm despite requests from the teams to reconsider his decision.

Rather than send his players back home, new Burnham manager Luther Blissett took the opportunity to host a team-building afternoon.

He also spoke about racism in the game, being an active member of the Show Racism the Red Card campaign.

This Saturday, the Blues make the long journey down to Gloucestershire to play Longlevens, who are ninth in the table.

Striker Elliot Amadieu will be looking to add to his tally of five goals, two of them having come in the 4-2 win at Oxford City Nomads two weeks ago.

Burnham’s performance was described as “their best we’ve seen for four years” by the club’s directors.

Their squad that night included new signings Callum Betts and Jacob Cook, a former Watford Academy player who had a short spell with Windsor.

Keeper Joe Broadley, who has been sidelined for several weeks with a knee injury, is back in light training, while defender Josh Perry is also returning to match fitness.

Blissett is now working closely with Simon Chandler, who spent six seasons on the books of Chelsea and captained their youth team, helping them to junior league and cup honours.

Over the years, spotting and nurturing young players has become his passion and he ran a highly successful youth set-up in the Reading area, going under the names of Wrightchoice.

He is now monitoring Burnham’s Under-18 squad, whose head coach is Sam Loades.

The team, with an average of 16, lost 5-1 to a physically-stronger and more mature Sandhurst team last Monday, but there were plenty of positives to come out of the game which is part of the youngsters’ learning curve.

Sandhurst are the current Allied Counties Youth League leaders, having won all of their seven games.