You know, I was that far away (making not-very-big-space jesture with my fingers) from not bothering with this preview. F**king weather.

To paraphrase something that somebody once said, "it's the hope I can't deal with". Going without my Cheadle fix over the summer is an established routine and causes only minor personal grief; advancing from fixture to fixture with that air of hope only to have it snatched away by Winter's sometimes cruel hands is different and is starting to do my head right in.

Redemption - as it so often did when I was a child - may come in the shape of Blackpool.

On Saturday 16th January in amongst the now-tedious row of "P-P" marks on the results list stood one solitary glimmer of hope: AFC Blackpool managed to get a game on. That was a 1-0 home win over Irlam, a win that has come in the middle of an impressive run of form for them: 4 wins in their last 6 matches and in a now-healthy 8th spot with 22 points from 18 games.

The fact that AFC Blackpool managed to get that Irlam match on owes much to the new drainage system that the club installed last season; of course it can't do much about freezing temperatures but AFCB's reputation for getting games on when others can't gives us that little bit of hope, doesn't it?

The reverse fixture at Park Road back at the start of December resulted in an allegedly (I wasn't there) very ill-tempered affair on and off the pitch and a 0-3 defeat for us lot. We'll want to avenge that, but the ride's gonna be as tough as the Pleasure Beach's Grand National rollercoaster.

Come on Cheadle!

Match report on here by midnight Saturday
Live score updates via Twitter from 3.00pm onwards

Last five at Jepson Way:
2008-2009: won 2-0
2007-2008: lost 0-5
2006-2007: lost 0-1
2005-2006: won 1-0
2004-2005: won 2-0