ILKLEY Town's hands are tied when it comes to knowing when/if they will be able to resume their 2020-21 campaign.

Having been last involved in league action back on December 19, Town were flying, winning seven of eight games before a third lockdown suspended play.

An early March date was rumoured, but manager Simon Armstrong is not counting his chickens.

"At the minute, it is still up in the air," he said.

"We are waiting for February 22 (when the government will outline a "route map" out of lockdown) and hopefully we get an idea of when and what is going to happen.

"Until then, we are just ticking the players over with a bit of social stuff every week on Zoom and doing a HIIT session every week to keep people connected until we have got more direction on what is happening then we can start to plan.

"The priority is that everyone keeps well, and the country sorts itself out from a vaccination perspective.

"Everyone understands their position, yes we want to play football, but we appreciate the bigger picture."

Chairman Richard Giles recently indicated Ilkley are in a lucky position in terms of their pitch at Ben Rhydding Sports Club being 3G and floodlit so midweek games could be played if needed.

Armstrong agrees, although he knows it isn't the case for everybody else in the league.

He said: "We are fortunate we can play midweek games because we have got floodlights so we can play twice a week and rattle through the games quickly if we had too.

"The challenge for our level is for the eight or nine teams who don’t have floodlights and can’t get as many games in. The league has to take that into consideration because they have to be fair to everybody.

"I think our league will be influenced by what happens higher up, that is massively up in the air. I don’t think our league will make a decision until those leagues make their choice.

"It is a real unprecedented and unfortunate situation and one you cannot really predict what is going to happen, you just have to roll with it.

"We can’t do much about it, it is out of our hands. I don’t envy the people having to make those decisions. "

Armstrong added: "It is a project (promotion) a few years in the making on and off the pitch.

"For the last two years, we have been ready to make that step. It has been progressing towards that, we have probably got the strongest squad we have ever had.

"It is frustrating we cannot make that next step at this stage."