Kilby cannot have it both ways

Any replay will go ahead on Saturday, 5^th round day, and we will then visit the winners on either Wednesday 18^th or Wednesday 25^th February and that will all depend on the local police and whether they will require the statutory ten days notice.

If not and we do play on the first Wednesday then we will do so without the services of midfielder Richard Chaplow who will be on England duty and hopefully making his England debut for the Under-19s the day before.

Our Chairman has complained that we could be without the services of an influential player through no fault of our own and has lodged an appeal.

"We are not happy at all with the current arrangement," said the Burnley Chairman yesterday.

"Why should we face losing an influential player for such a crucial game when the delay in playing is nothing to do with us. We have already appealed to the Football Association and I expect them to take into consideration our situation if tomorrow's game does not throw up a winner."

So Barry is not keen on playing without one of our players because of international duty. Yet it is the same Barry Kilby who recently went to a meeting of Football League Chairmen and tried to bring in rules that would enforce First Division clubs to play league games without their international players and claimed it unfair that we lost our Saturday home game against Reading because of it.

Basically he thought it was right that Reading should have to play us without three players, albeit one of them a Jamaican Under-21, yet is not happy that we must play a cup tie with one Under-19 player missing.

Something does need sorting out for certain. The FA Cup date problems wouldn’t have happened in the first place had the police not had the rules changed to enforce ten day rules although there does seem to be some consistency with international call ups, if you have three players unavailable you can call it off.

It is all money though with the Clarets and certainly is in this case with the potential loss of money in a 6^th round tie.

But we cannot have it both ways and it looks as though we want to have our cake and eat it on this.