West Sussex League chiefs will be holding crisis talks at their monthly meeting this week.

Another weekend's bad weather, which wiped out nearly all football in Sussex, has put the league 1,090 games behind schedule.

With just over a month left of the season and the rain still making many pitches unplayable, the dreaded question of abandoning the league could crop up.

Fixtures secretary Ron Ginnow admitted that the situation is becoming almost as bad as 1963-64 when snow made football impossible for three months.

He said: "Back then we didn't see a ball kicked from Boxing Day until the end of March. Although we're not quite as bad off as that season, another couple of weeks of bad weather will see us surpass that backlog.

"We did manage to finish that season. Teams played lots of midweek games and that's the situation we are in now. One good thing is that we can start playing two matches from now on because the clocks have gone forward.

"But if this damn weather doesn't stop then we might find ourselves being beaten by it. However, if we do get through the season we'll be thinking what all the fuss was about."

The East Sussex League have this week introduced the six points at stake for one match rule. This is for fixtures between teams that have not played each other yet.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings are also being used to catch up with a backlog of more than 600 games.

Secretary Doug Saunders said: "One of the main problems we are experiencing on top of the weather is the foot and mouth crisis. A fair few pitches are still closed to the public. Thankfully councils have extended to us the use of other pitches and are allowing us to use some for a longer period if needed.

"But if we were to suffer more bad weather then we'll have to look at it. I think we could probably extend the season by two weeks if needed, but we're intending to get all matches played by the first week in May."

Sussex Sunday League fixtures guru Ernie Coleman is about 500 games behind the pace, but he is now playing games on Thursday evenings and has the option of taking another midweek day if required.

But Ernie said he has set a April 29 cut-off date and is not going to play fixtures beyond that.

He said: "The pitches are in such a bad state that there will come a time when the councils will need to get on them and do some repair work."

Sussex FA chief executive Ken Benham said: "It's getting bad. If this continues for another couple of weeks I believe leagues will find it impossible to finish.

"The FA has extended the season to May 31, which gives everyone a bit of leeway, but many leagues will struggle because they play their games on council owned pitches."