AFC Telford United today insisted they would pull out all the stops to try and stage their Christmas clash with Redditch.

Telford were forced to surrender to the elements before Saturday’s Eastwood game – with three of the starting XI, and manager Andy Sinton, stuck in snow.

The Bucks are next scheduled to be in Blue Square Bet North action at Stafford on Boxing Day but, with temperatures not forecast to rise above zero, that looks in doubt too.

But Carter believes they will have a good chance of staging the game with Redditch on December 28.

“The pitch is still great under the covers, all the snow has provided a thermal protection and we’re hopeful the Redditch game will be on,” he said.

“We were disappointed on Saturday because, with everyone else being off, if we’d played and won we could have gone top of the table.”

Carter admits they had little choice but to call Saturday’s game off shortly before midday, having been confident for most of the morning they could play.

Will Salmon, Stuart Whitehead and Jon Adams were caught up in travel problems.

Sinton was also struggling to reach the New Bucks Head from his Birmingham base, while Eastwood were finding the going tough in their journey from Nottinghamshire.

“We had about 60 or 70 people to help clear snow, which was a fantastic effort,” said Carter.

“We cleared 90 per cent of the snow off the pitch and surrounding areas but we had a number of players struggling to get to us and Eastwood were having a tough time too.

“They’d probably all have got here except for Will Salmon and we would have started without him.

“But it started snowing quite heavily so it was starting to lie where we’d cleared it and, with hindsight, we’d probably not have finished even if we’d been able to start.”

By CHRIS HUDSON