Local league officials are hoping for improved weather in January to help clear a backlog of fixtures which have built up in the past few weeks.

The weekend’s entire programme in the Gravesend League on Saturday and the North Kent Sunday League was called off due to the wintry conditions, which also hit Stonebridge Road, pictured.

The fixtures will need to be played at some stage in the new year with football starting again on January 2 and 3 and the Sunday League, in particular, hope they have a spell of better weather.

Graham East, chairman of the North Kent Sunday League, said: "We are not too badly off. We are behind because of all the rain we’ve had.

"The problem we have is getting the cup games played. We can play catch up in the new year if the weather’s kind and with the league games we can double or play on Thursday nights when the light gets better at the end of the season.

"But we need to get the cup games out of the way now."

He added: "We have to hope for good weather in January. Last year we had bad weather and we had more games off but we still managed to catch up. I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to again this year."

Peter Danzey, fixtures secretary for the Gravesend League, said his league would fare even better than their Sunday counterparts.

He said: "We have now lost 31 games so far this season, which is up on last year. But we have a relatively small number of teams in our league so are not caused too many problems.

"We tend to factor in weekends like this at the start of the season. At the start of the season I have 37 Saturdays available – which is a lot, really.

"In the Premier Division, they play each team three times so that is only 21 games and though there are cup games on top of that, not every team is lucky enough to be successful in the cups.

"That means there are effectively 16 spare Saturdays for cup games and to give us breathing space for postponements.

"Also, towards the end of the season we have the option of Tuesday night games to make it up, so it is not too bad."