IN A week where Liverpool are playing two games in three days and Alan Pardew has slammed the fixture congestion caused by West Ham's FA Cup run, most players in The Northern Echo Darlington Sunday Invitation League are just hoping for a match.

In total, there have been five competitive games in four weeks and Copper Beech are one of many sides not to have played in a month.

The enforced break comes just as we had hit a bit of a hot streak, too, having recorded one consecutive win. We take on Royal British Legion in our biggest game of the season on Sunday, so let's hope the momentum has not been lost.

THE MAIN reason for the lack of games has been a blanket ban on games being played at Hundens Lane over recent weeks. It's Darlington's answer to Hackney Marshes and pretty much everyone plays there, but the recent weather has left the pitches resembling a mudbath.

Unless they are sorted soon, we'll still be playing when the World Cup starts at this rate, but a Darlington Borough Council spokesman promised: "Our grounds staff are constantly working on the pitches.

"In terms of when people can play there again, it'll depend on the weather and when the pitches are deemed to be playable. If we'd let games go ahead on them and they got churned up even further, it'd take even longer to get them back into use again."

SO NOT much action on the pitch, but plenty off it. Top footballers and glamour models go together like Sunday league players and hangovers, but two weeks ago the stars of The Northern Echo Darlington Sunday Invitation League got up close and personal with the kind of girls normally favoured by their Premiership counterparts.

Lads' mag favourite Lauren Pope has been linked with the likes of John Terry and Peter Crouch - plus Prince Harry - but earlier this month she swapped her usual London haunts like Funky Buddha and China White for Escapade in Darlington.

With no top flight soccer stars there, the 34D blonde babe instead made do with some of our league's finest. She was seen canoodling with the likes of Matty Cole of MN All Stars, Dean Browne of Haughton and of course King of the Wing - but sadly, as per usual, none of them scored.

THE NORTHERN Echo striker Lee Hall points out in response to the last column that he no longer works out at The Penthouse gym, but has now "upgraded" to Bannatyne's Health Club.

Judging by the pot belly currently sported by the division two bottom side's leading goalscorer, it seems that he doesn't go very often.

Published: 24/03/06