RHAYADER Town Football Club have welcomed news of the potential starting date to their debut season in the Ardal South East League.

However the club has insisted rules must change ahead of the New Year and players should not be denied changing facilities as current Welsh Government regulations stipulate.

A club spokesman said: "I think it’s optimistic to think that the league will actually start in January with potential firebreaks still to come.

"They also need to let tier two run first and see how that pans out.

"Saying that we have to plan for that eventuality and will do.

"However unless the rules around changing facilities and rule of 30 aren’t going to change then we would seriously need to look at how this will affect the health and well being of our players.

"We shouldn’t be expected to travel potentially 140 mile round trip on a wet winter evening without having changing facilities available."

The club has joined the rest of tier three clubs across Wales in highlighting their concerns but fear their reservations have 'fallen on deaf ears.'

"We have been itching to get started and all clubs in our league fed back to the FAW with proposals however these ideas primarily seemed to have fallen on deaf ears," added the spokesman.

"Surely all these clubs that put in hard work to get into the respective leagues could now face the danger of being relegated and only playing minimum games and a lot of players potentially will have moved to English clubs or work in environments where they can’t risk getting coronavirus from playing football on a Saturday.

"We have a lot to think about but we are ready to go when needed we have a young squad who are buzzing to get going and hopefully we can still strengthen with some experienced players before the season starts."