The weather can play havoc with fixtures but getting the game called of just 80 minutes before kick-off is a bit of a bitter blow for travelling fans.
| Falkirk's managing director George Craig apologised to St Johnstone fans after the game was called off just 80 minutes before kick-off. SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster, who has already dismissed the idea of summer football, plans to launch an investigation into why the undersoil heating at the Falkirk Stadium failed to deal with the conditions and why the game was not called off after local referee Stephen Finnie staged an 11am inspection. Game referee Stevie O'Reilly arrived as expected after 1pm and inspected the pitch. He was concerned over four frozen strips of turf which the covers did not stretch to reach. This was enough to get the game cancelled, although both teams then trained on the surface. More than 1500 Saints fans were en route to the game when they heard the news and Craig said: "I know how desperately disappointed the St Johnstone fans are, as are ours. St Johnstone had identified this fixture as a real special occasion and so I apologise to all their fans. They will have had their whole day planned and they were travelling down through difficult conditions. I know they would have been wanting me to be doing everything that I could to get the game on rather than coming in and saying 'we won't bother'. My job was to come in here early in the morning and do as much as I could to get the game on and I did that. To be fair, the local referee was happy generally with the state of the pitch and he gave us a degree of comfort. If we thought it was going to be perfect we would have come in at our normal time and not seven o'clock in the morning. I couldn't have done any more and there was nothing more that Falkirk could do. So I hope the St Johnstone fans will give us that, that we actually worked hard. Having said that I do apologise most sincerely to them." Referee O'Reilly claimed he was simply not prepared to take a chance on injuries if the game had gone ahead. He said: "It would have been great to play the game because we have all travelled through some awkward conditions to get here. The club had four hours to work on it from 11am to 3pm but unfortunately when we turned up at 10 past one it was clear from just walking on the pitch with our shoes that there were so many places that were bone-hard. Like we always say in these circumstances, our primary concern is the players taking part in the game. If a player had run from a soft surface to a hard surface, slipped and cracked his head I would be feeling terrible and so it's just not possible to put the game on, regardless of how much you want it to go on." St Johnstone boss Derek McInnes insists any decision made by the local referee should have been relayed to the match referee and stood. If there were doubts over the playability the game should been cancelled at 11am. He said: "I am a bit surprised the game was off. I've seen pitches in worse condition to be honest. There was a pitch inspection at 11am and we got a call at 11.15am saying it was fine, so that allayed any fears that we had. So we came here thinking the game was on. You see that Falkirk had been working on the pitch with the four heaters, maybe they thought it would have been OK by three o'clock. But we have supporters coming from a long way and 11 o'clock was a fair enough time to make a decision. It's not as if the temperatures dropped dramatically so it is really frustrating. We had the chance to go fifth in the league and that would have been really healthy for us. We are disappointed but you have to respect the referee's decision." Falkirk boss Eddie May admits the decision to call the game off could have been made earlier. He said: "If you have a pitch inspection at 11am then it is either on or off. It is very disappointing because a lot of people were travelling down. But the referee has a decision to make and he has made that on three or four areas of the pitch which were not up to the standard of SPL football. It has been an ongoing battle with the pitch for a few days now and there have been people working very hard but the referee couldn't take a chance. We have covers on top of the undersoil heating but I think it only works up to minus five and anything below that we can't do anything about. You have to respect the referee's decision." |
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