Inclement conditions are always tricky for lower league football clubs, as fans rightly expect to be kept informed, and for clubs it is a real challenge with how much you say, when you say it, and how you protect yourselves against the unexpected.
| 6PM UPDATE An official has inspected the LNER Stadium surface, which has successfully thawed apart from an area at the south end of the pitch. Our grounds team will work as long as is needed to move the lighting rigs in order to keep thawing out the remaining hard areas of the pitch. We anticipate a pitch inspection by the match referee in the morning to check on progress and we will provide an update as soon as we can following this. We remain confident the game will go ahead as scheduled. |
Following a review of recent practices, we thought we’d take a different approach. What follows below is a current status report: what we know so far, what is going on in our thinking, and why we are very confident our Sky Bet League One fixture against Derby County will go ahead as planned.
Ground temperatures within the stadium bowl on Thursday night reached -5C, but this was expected. Due to the cold weather earlier in the week, and in planning for this fixture, our grounds manager Liam Markie has had the frost covers in place since Sunday afternoon.
At this juncture, it is important to note frost covers are able to protect a pitch up to conditions as low as -3C.
On inspecting the pitch on Friday morning, we found a handful of areas that require some remedial work. This was as anticipated and not at a level that fazes us. Liam and his staff are working on these areas now with the pitch responding positively – again, supporting our optimism.
From this point we expect temperatures to be above freezing until the early hours of Saturday morning, where conditions should only drop to -1C for a small period of time.
Our approach to this situation is that we aim to get the pitch fully playable by 5pm today. We will then reintroduce the frost covers overnight and, so as long as we stay within the forecasted -1C to -3C ground temperature range in the stadium bowl, we don’t anticipate any further challenges.
The final element that works in our favour is the positive temperature expected from 5am on Saturday morning, with temperatures expected to rise to +5C by midday.
This, again, should give our grounds team the opportunity to conduct any final remedial works required.
The team will remain at the LNER Stadium throughout the night to move lighting rigs, and undertake any ongoing remedial work required, and the club are committed to providing the resources to do whatever is needed to keep the game on.
As a football club there are many things we can and can’t control. Our actions and our commitment we control. The weather we don’t.
So to conclude, should all be as expected, we are very confident the game will go ahead as planned.