STFC Sport
SWINDON TOWN: Left in the cold
6:00am Monday 6th February 2012
SWINDON Town plan to seek compensation from the company that provided the heating equipment used to try and ensure Saturday’s League Two fixture with Burton went ahead, with chief executive Nick Watkins confirming what was delivered fell way short of what the club were promised.
With weather conditions deteriorating as the weekend approached, Town opted to invest some £10,000 in enlisting the services of an outside contractor on Friday afternoon to provide heater blowers and a heated dome.
The equipment, however, not only arrived late but was also below the standard the club had been promised and consequently they were unable to provide heat adequately to all areas of the pitch.
And, despite the best efforts of the Swindon staff, the Burton clash was called off by the referee following a 10am inspection on Saturday morning.
Watkins was understandably disappointed. Not for the referee’s decision, but because he was convinced the game would have gone ahead had they been provided with the equipment they were promised.
He told the Advertiser: “When it looked as though the game might be in jeopardy because of the weather, and also because we have a very important game on Tuesday, we took the decision to invest in the dome in the hope we would have sufficient time to get the frost out of the pitch.
“When all the equipment turned up, and it turned up later than it had been promised, the equipment one of the sub-contracted firms provided – the heaters primarily – were inadequate and a large percentage did not work.
“Through the very good offices of Fast Plant, who sponsor the Town End, we got more blowers in at midnight, but it was insufficient to compensate for the shortfall in the blowing capacity we had had delivered.
“We kept blowing the hot hair through the canopy up until the referee came and parts of the pitch were playable, the channels were fine, but areas where there were less grass was too hard in the view of the referee.
“He felt it would be too much of a risk if, having got all the sheets off, he found patches on the pitch that were still resistant to the thaw.
“Given the state of the pitch when we took the covers off on Saturday morning it was only those areas that were denied the heating capacity we were promised that suffered. If we had had the full capacity then I have no doubt the game would have been on.
“It was not a cheap investment, but we will be seeking some level of compensation because what was committed to and what was delivered were two entirely different sets of circumstances.
“That is an issue for me to deal with today with the company concerned, and I have plenty of witness statements from all of those involved to back up any claim we will make.”
The postponement adds to an already congested fixture schedule, but Watkins is confident the club’s efforts will not be wasted with tomorrow’s Johnstone’s Paint Trophy clash with Barnet expected to go ahead as planned.
“What we wanted to do was to avoid more fixture back log.
“We already have games pretty much every Tuesday and Saturday and that is just going to be exacerbated now,” added Watkins.
“However, it also has to be taken into account that 50 per cent of the effort was to get the game to go ahead on Saturday and the other 50 per cent was to make sure the pitch is playable for Tuesday.
“As things stand I am confident that the Barnet game will be fine and the work we have done will not be completely wasted.”