MOTHERWELL yesterday issued an apology for any inconvenience caused to travelling Highland fans by the early morning postponement of yesterday's televised SPFL encounter with Inverness Caledonian Thistle, writes Stewart Fisher.
The Fir Park club, chasing a sixth successive league win, were thwarted by the heavy rain which had fallen in Lanarkshire in the previous 48 hours, with referee John Beaton deeming the pitch unfit for play at an 8am inspection. That would have been the time when Caley Thistle supporters would have been leaving in order to make the 12.45pm kick-off.
The Lanarkshire club have suffered various problems in recent times getting weather-hit matches played at Fir Park, but there was little accounting yesterday for the downpour, which saw approximately 180mm of rainfall in the last 19 days, around six times the usual monthly average.
Head groundsman Mikey Ellis had been hopeful the pitch would have dried out overnight, but two areas in particular, in front of the East Stand at half way and at the East/South corner, were saturated, and the match official had no hesitation in calling the match off.
"An inspection was called for 8am this morning and the hope was that although the pitch was and is very wet, favourable conditions through the night would have seen it dry out to the point where it was playable," said a Motherwell FC statement.
"Unfortunately, it wasn't enough and match official John Beaton was forced to call the game off after inspecting it early this morning. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."
The SPFL have yet to announce a rearranged date for the fixture.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article