Braintree Town chairman Lee Harding is confident that there will be money available this summer for extra work on the Amlin Stadium pitch’s drainage.

A waterlogged playing surface caused big problems for the Iron last season, helping to create a backlog of fixtures that saw the Iron having to play up to four games a week in the closing months of the campaign.

That ultimately did little to help their bid to finish in the Skrill Premier play-offs and also hit finances as they spent much of January and February without a home fixture and the matchday revenue that would have brought.

Harding estimated that the loss of New Year’s Day’s home game against Cambridge United cost them £20,000, but the club ended the season with only a small trading loss and the chairman said manager Alan Devonshire’s playing budget for next year would not be affected.

And he said there should be some cash to allow further drainage work on the pitch.

“We are happy Alan’s budget won’t be affected next year,” said Harding.

“There have been some extraordinary things happen this year stopping us playing in January and February and we hope we won’t have to go through that again.

“We are going to spend some more money on the drainage of the Cressing Road pitch in the summer and I’m confident the work we did last summer and will do this summer will give us a pitch that will drain better."

See the this week's paper for the full version of this story and details on Alan Devonshire's squad building plans.