Tadcaster Albion's pitch is only a few yards from the River Wharfe

Tadcaster Albion's clubhouse survived a second flooding in nine years by just three inches after the River Wharfe broke its banks again.

The building was refurbished in 2001 after the previous year's floods.

Albion secretary Howard Clarke told BBC Radio York: "The lads went in in a rowing boat across the car park.

"They got the carpet up and moved as much furniture as they could, it [the water] was three inches from entering the clubhouse again, but it didn't."

Not surprisingly there is virtually no chance of Saturday's Northern Counties East League Division One home game against AFC Emley going ahead as the south side of the pitch is still underwater.

We're living on a knife's edge all the time while the water's rising, it's getting beyond a joke Tadcaster Albion secretary Howard Clarke

The club hopes the pitch will be fit for the following home game, which is in two weeks' time against Barton Town Old Boys.

"I've been associated with the club for all my life," Clarke added. "When they first started playing down at Ings Lane, if it flooded once every three years that would be it, but now it's once every six months or so."

Clarke expects the waters to have receded by the weekend but admits there will be a clean-up job to remove the slurry, muck and dead wood and for the fences to put back together again.

That work will all have to be done by volunteers.

"Nobody gets paid," Clarke added. "We're living on a knife's edge all the time while the water's rising, it's getting beyond a joke."