Game Off, Game On

A phone call late last night from the Secretary of the Home team for the FA Women's Cup tie I was refereeing today put me on notice that the groundsman from the facility on which the game was to be played, had serious concerns about the condition of the field.

He advised that if any further rain fell overnight, then the game might have to be called off. I checked my Instructions from The FA and noted that a pitch inspection had to be undertaken and reported to the Referee's Department at The FA for them to make the decision directly.

All seemed clear cut until this morning when the dreaded phone call came through that the groundsman was refusing use of the field as it had some standing water on it. The weather was dry, sunny and with a drying wind blowing it seemed a little early to make this call some 4 hours before kick off, however the away team did have a longish journey. So the Secretary said the game was off. I tried to contact the Referee's Department to no avail and eventually got a call from a representative of The FA who advised that he was not happy but had to accept the situation which meant the game was postponed and scheduled for next Sunday afternoon.

This meant that I had to give backword on my District Cup U16 tie, as did one of my Assistants and he also had to let a District Sunday cup tie go as well ... Deefor was not happy and to be honest neither were we as we couldn't have foreseen the postponement and closed the potential re-arranged date with all other competitions.

So to the game on part ... I rang the Sunday League Appointments Secretary having been released from my commitment this afternoon and picked up the only game without a referee ... strangely enough it was the one that one of my Assistants for this afternoon's planned FA Women's Cup Tie had given up!!! So Game 22 was on!!!