Last Thursday’s Fourth Round tie in The Youth Cup featured Chelsea and Shrewsbury at Griffin Park, where the surface was apparently in perfect condition. The Blues haven’t won the competition since the ‘60s. They hadn’t even been beyond the Fourth Round since 1998, while the visitors were looking to make history as they had never been past that stage.

Shrewsbury packed their defence from the start and showed little ambition to push forward into Chelsea’s half. They were still alive at 2-0 with seven minutes left, but two late goals from the home side produced a scoreline that more closely reflected the one-sided nature of the game.

The key on Saturday was finding a game that was definitely on. Merstham v Pickering in The FA Vase had been first choice, but that was called off after a pitch inspection on Friday. Greenwich Borough’s tie with Harefield was then in the frame, but a call to the ground early on Saturday afternoon got the unhelpful response: "This number does not take incoming calls".

I hadn’t been to The Warren, Yeading’s old ground, so far this season and decided to go there after getting confirmation that Bedfont Green’s Combined Counties League fixture with Bookham was going ahead. It was a dismally grey afternoon, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the pitch. I counted five people watching as the teams ran out for the start, but a few minutes into the game, this had swelled to a much more impressive 21.

Bedfont Green were 4-0 up at the interval and 6-1 winners at the end. Three minutes from time a player from each side was red-carded and in the aftermath there was a fight in the 'tunnel' leading to the dressing rooms that involved players, coaches and others. The game was held up for eight minutes and at one point I thought it might be abandoned.

My 111th game of the season, and 5,443rd all told, was last night’s enthralling FA Cup Third Round replay between Barnet and Swindon at Underhill. I was writing a report for the website, so sat in the press section. There I met David Bloomfield, a former FA colleague who is now the Bees’ Media & Marketing Manager.

Barnet won via a penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw. Swindon contrived to miss all four kicks and the ‘keeper only had to make one save. The game finished at 10.28 and it took nearly two hours to get back to Paddington due to signalling problems on the Northern line.