BARNOLDSWICK Town manager Endrit Shehu could not believe his side's North West Counties Premier Division fixture at 1874 Northwich went ahead after most of the other football at the weekend did not taking place.

Six matches took place in the league on Saturday, while the other three were postponed due to the Coronavirus outbreak.

The NWC only decided to follow the Premier League and EFL's stance of suspending the season after a meeting at the beginning of this week.

The league issued this statement on Monday: "Following the Government’s announcement this evening that all non essential social contact should stop immediately due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the League Management Committee has agreed it has no alternative but to suspend all NWCFL fixtures until further notice with immediate effect.

"Obviously none of us know what will happen next but we will keep monitoring the situation and report back when we receive guidance from the FA and other authorities.

"We would like to wish all players, officials and supporters of our clubs and league well during this difficult time."

Shehu was surprised that the league did not react sooner and thinks they have finally made the right call.

Speaking before the league made the announcement, he said: "They left it down to the clubs to communicate between themselves and the ones that were happy played.

"It would be stupid not to call the games off for us after it happened in other competitions, I think we should follow."

The game finished 0-0, meaning Barlick took a great point off the league leaders and now sit seven points above the drop zone.

Each side exchanged chances early on with Town's Joe Noblet striking on target and Jack Little producing a good save, before Northwich struck the post on the quarter-hour mark.

Massive shouts for a penalty were made minutes later when striker Mamadou Djabi was dragged down in the area. Referee Alex Kelly turned down the appeals.

Noblet and Andrew Hill combined to generate a headed chance for Djabi just before the break, but his effort flew over the bar.

It was an uneventful opening to the second period until the hosts should have scored from a free header in the 64th-minute.

It took the visitors two minutes before the end to create anything meaningful but what an opportunity it was to steal the spoils. Alex Ralph firing narrowly wide from a corner to almost break the deadlock late on.

Shehu's side took great pride in canceling out the leaders who have netted a league high of 79 goals this season.

The Town boss was delighted with the point and thinks his 17th-placed team are in no danger of relegation.

He said: "It was a brilliant point against top of the league, the best team in the league so we are very happy that it went the way it did.

"We had to come up with a game plan and that was it. We had to be compact and keep a clean sheet. We had to wait for a chance and in the end, I think we had two good ones.

"Since the Hanley game (which they won 3-1 at the start of the month) the lads are full of confidence, they believe in themselves a bit more and hopefully we can start building.

"We had the quality, it was just one of them where once you are getting negative results it is hard to get out of it. I think we are on the way up at the moment.

"We are not worried (about going down) with the players we have got and the games we have in hand, we are more than confident that it is going to be a strong finish to the league."