CHIPPENHAM Town manager Mike Cook is not hopeful of being able to finish off the National League South season after the coronavirus pandemic caused the competition to be suspended this week.

The National League decided to postpone all remaining fixtures until April 4 at the earliest, bringing it in line with several other sports who opted to shut down while the virus is at its peak.

And while Cook fully supported this decision, the Bluebirds boss does not believe the 2019-20 season will be able to be completed in its entirety without causing massive disruption to subsequent campaigns.

He said: “I’m not hopeful of being able to finish off the season.

“There are a couple of things going on that would indicate this will go on for a lot longer than April 4, so I’m not hopeful we’ll get this season done at all.

“If the season did restart around April, we could quite easily finish the season in plenty of time playing twice a week.

“But if this goes on until May or June, then you could possibly be playing games until July and then have the season start again in August or September.”

One argument towards resolving the fate of all teams involved in football would be to call the season as it is now, and teams that find themselves in promotion or relegation places change divisions as the season is over 75 per cent of the way through.

After a significant upturn in form that included four wins in the club’s previous six outings, Chippenham have moved seven points clear of the relegation places and now sit in a comfortable 12th position in National League South.

Cook would be in favour of that resolution, but said he is simply taking each day as it comes and reacting to government advice the same as everyone else in the country.

He said: “Because it’s the first time something like this has ever happened, everybody else is just surmising and nobody really knows what’s going on.

“I’m just glad that we got ourselves into a position where we’re out of relegation, so if they do take a snapshot of the league and each team’s fate is decided that way, we would be safe.

“We cancelled training this week, and we’ll re-evaluate things on Monday.

“We don’t have any contingency plans for the time being, we’re just doing what everybody else is doing.

“We would have only met on a Tuesday, a Thursday and a Saturday anyway, so it’s not going to affect us too much in that way.”