Bill Williams is hopeful Maidstone will avoid punishment over their postponed National League fixture against Macclesfield.

Tuesday's night home game was called off at 7.45pm with most of the Stones players stuck in three-hour delays following a lorry crash on the M25.

Failure to fulfil a fixture can lead to a big fine or even a points deduction but Stones chief executive Williams says the situation was beyond their control.

Stones had only five players at the Gallagher Stadium, with seven the minimum number required for the match to go ahead.

Williams believes the league will look sympathetically at United's plight and not throw the book at them.

He said: "With regards to is it going to cost us anything, we're just going to have to face up that now.

"This is the first time it's happened in my 50 years in football, so it doesn't happen normally.

"We plan, we give ourselves plenty of time, whether we're going home or away, the players give themselves plenty of time and this was just one of those one-offs.

"I think the league will look at it as it is.

"Hopefully, they'll be fair in their judgement and say, 'well, look, this is something out of your control.'

"It wasn't as if we'd hidden all our players in a locker and didn't want to go and play.

"We wanted to play, we'd paid to put the event on, we'd got all the security here, we'd got all the food here, we'd got all the booze here.

"We'd got everybody ready for the game and the last thing you want to do is not play it.

"I really was looking forward to it. It's great when you play the top teams.

"We were desperate to get a win and we were up for it but it didn't happen, so we take them another day."

Some fans branded the situation a 'fiasco' and said United players should have been at the ground earlier - but Williams rejected those suggestions.

He said: "How early do you want them to get here?

"They left home at half past four, five o'clock.

"I can understand people's frustration but you don't expect what happened today. It's so unusual.

"In football, things happen out of your control.

"You can come to a game and you get a really bad injury, you can come to a game and it snows.

"In this case, there was an awful accident on the motorway, it was covered in petrol and oil, it was closed for four or five hours and there's nothing our 15 players who were stuck across there could do about it."