Chairman Comments on Pitch…

“Firstly I would like to apologise to the people who attended Bolitho Park for yesterday’s game, only be called off at the last minute.

Last week the ground staff along with many volunteers spent hours on the pitch to try and get the game on, and the pitch was much better than it would have been without so much work being done.

Saturday morning we called a pitch inspection with a referee approved by the Southern League who also FaceTimed the match referee and at that point the pitch was deemed playable. So, as a club we have followed the procedures set out by the league.

When the referee arrived we had a few very heavy showers which was the slight difference to the morning and after a lot of consideration and consulting by both managers, it was deemed unplayable which we as a club were extremely disappointed after all the hard work put in by the ground staff and volunteers.

We also appreciate that people travelled to the ground but this was out of our control when the pitch was deemed playable in the morning following a pitch inspection. The forecast yesterday morning was for a couple of light showers and nothing that we, or the referee who carried out the inspection thought would cause any concern.

We are aware that we need to complete some work on the pitch in the summer and have already started conversations with contractors to get works discussed to improve the pitch moving into next season.

We are also working with a team of volunteers for the remainder of the season to do any work we can to try and help.

Once again we understand peoples frustrations and I am sure you can all understand this is not good for the football club and the officers who are trying everything we can to continuously improve the football club.

We also need a bit of fortune on our side with the weather as we have had an extremely wet January and February, however we are not looking for excuses we are looking for solutions to move forward for the remainder of this season and then look forward to completing works on the pitch in the summer to try and remedy the issues for 2024/25 season.

Thank you once again for all the help provided and apologies to everyone who attended the game for it to be called off yesterday.

Let’s all pull together and push through what is going to be a very busy number of weeks ahead!”

Thank you
Mark
Chairman

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