BRADFORD (Park Avenue) are not expecting to be punished for playing Bradford City last Friday, but they can't guarantee that.

Avenue's friendly with Campion is not going ahead tonight, with director of football Martin Knight confirming that was because the Horsfall outfit do not have the relevant County FA affiliation yet.

Knight admitted that was partly due to the club trying to ensure their ever-growing youth academy was properly represented for the new season, but also because the FA website being down has left them unable to submit their finished documents.

As it stands, Avenue will be able to face Silsden on Saturday, as long as the website allows them to send off what they need.

Clarifying the situation as best as he could to the T&A, Knight said: "Assuming the FA website is up and running tomorrow like they've told us, all the paperwork is ready to go in.

"We tried to put the applications in last week, but the website was down. The FA told us it would be back up on Monday, then told us then it would be this Friday, so we're in their hands."

As for the prospect of any punishment for facing City, Knight said: "I couldn't tell you about that, but we've not been contacted by the FA so far, so as far as we're concerned everything is okay.

"We would hope there's no punishment but we don't know, that's not a decision we can take, it's down to the FA.

"We would cite mitigating circumstances that we were unable to register because their website was down, so that was beyond our control.

"We would hope that common sense prevails. We tried to say the same to Campion, but they didn't want to play us when we weren't affiliated.

"At all levels of football, these things go on constantly, especially in the lower pyramids, that teams register late or can't register.

"I understand that technically it shouldn't have happened but it was a very personal decision (see below).

"I wouldn't have thought we'd be able to play Silsden if it's not sorted, but we'll see what happens."

Explaining why Avenue had waited initially, Knight said: "I made the decision to delay because our academy has been so successful and the recruitment so strong, that we needed to make sure we could apply the right number of teams.

"You register your first team and you register your academy teams against them. We're well over 75 students this year, but if that had nudged through to 90, that's an extra team I need to submit, otherwise I haven't got enough teams registered to give the students pitch time.

"We had to balance it with the financial implication. If we'd have registered four teams and only needed three, we'd have overpaid, and vice versa, we wouldn't have had enough teams.

"The financial balancing of our books is also my responsibility.

"That was my personal decision, and I stand by that being a prudent business decision, and then circumstances beyond our control meant we couldn't do the registration in time."