Nomadic Ayrshire non-league side seeking home comforts after season on the road

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Chris Wilson admits he's desperately seeking home comforts for his Dalry Thistle nomads this year after a season spent largely on the road.The North Ayrshire outfit have managed to play just FOUR games at their Merksworth Park ground since July.Long-standing draining issues, vandalism and bad weather have made it extremely difficult for Wilson's West of Scotland League side to turn out on their own turf.

They even resorted to playing a recent 'home' fixture 15 miles away in Kilmarnock just to get a game after almost a month on the sidelines.Ongoing issues - a waterlogged Merksworth saw last Saturday's scheduled match against Newmains postponed - mean Dalry have only managed to play 12 league games in total so far - the lowest of any Division Three side.Despite their difficulties, eight wins has them sitting 10th out of 19 teams.

They would be one place better off had it not been for a three-point deduction incurred in August for inadvertently fielding ineligible players.But boss Wilson admits he's longing for a return to some kind of normality he believes could be crucial to the league run-in.He said: "We finished last season really strongly taking something like 20 out of our last 27 points."I wouldn't say we had aspirations of doing anything crazy this year, the main thing was to be competitive."Unfortunately, there's a recurring issue at the ground which the club are working really hard to resolve."It means it's been a struggle to get games on.

This year has been pretty bad with the weather and we had a wee problem with vandalism. We've been really unlucky."We've 24 games to play between now and the end of the season so it's going to be a real challenge for us as a squad.