ROMSEY Town boss Andy Samuels is looking forward to the day he receives some happy, smiley emojis on his mobile phone.

After two more postponements this week, the only faces his frustrated players have been sending him are red-faced, angry ones.

The positive news for the Sydenhams Wessex Division One promotion chasers is that, since the turn of the year, they have picked up maximum league points.

The depressing news is that they have played just twice in 2018 – a 7-0 blitz at Totton & Eling on January 13 followed, three weeks later, by a gritty 1-0 success at Fawley.

With heavy rain again battering the region, two more scheduled games – at Hythe & Didben last Saturday and at Folland Sports on Tuesday - were washed down the drain this week.

Now manager Samuels is hoping it will be third time lucky on Saturday when Town are due to pay a visit to promotion rivals Christchurch.

Speaking in the wake of Tuesday’s postponement, Samuels said: “It’s crazy that we’re in the middle of February now and we’ve only played two games since Christmas!

“It’s frustrating because you can’t get any momentum going - and momentum is exactly what you need when you’re going for promotion.

“At the moment, it’s stop-start, stop-start all the time.

“I’m frustrated and so are the players.

“When I message them telling them the game’s off, all I get back is an angry, little red-faced emoji!

“Hopefully the Christchurch game will be on, even though in an ideal world we don’t want to go into a crunch game like that having played just twice in one-and-a-half months.”

Ollie Cherrett’s Priory have suffered similar frustration to Romsey, having also played just twice this year – a 2-1 home win over Whitchurch United followed by a 1-1 draw at Totton & Eling.

They had been due to host Alton last night, but that too fell foul of the weather.

Priory sit fourth in the table on 44 points, but with a whopping six games in hand on leaders Laverstock & Ford.

Romsey are sixth, two points behind Christchurch, having played two games more.

“The table doesn’t lie. Christchurch have only lost one league game all season and won all nine at home.

“In my opinion, they’re the team to catch. They’re the title favourites,” said Samuels.

“Hopefully we’ll go there and take points off them even if we don’t come away with a win.

“But it’s important we don’t get carried away with how big this fixture is and lose our focus and concentration.

“Credit to Ollie (Cherrett), he’s made Christchurch a hard team to beat.

“They’ve got a lovely pitch there and every time we’ve played them it’s been an eventful, close game.”

Cherrett also spoke recently about the tedium of postponed fixtures, revealing his Christchurch squad had taken to party planning to beat the boredom.

He smiled: “I think the lads have quite enjoyed having a bit of a break because they have already managed to arrange the end-of-season do!

“But we are desperate to get started again. I have had enough Saturdays going shopping or being sat in watching Sky Sports News all day, it’s becoming a bit boring.”