I like to watch now, more than participate (football and this board!), and I've been watching this thread with 'interest'.
So, sorry it's a long one. I fully understand why people won't get any further than this point. But there are a lot of issues here, not least with obvious personal animosities raising their ugly heads and perhaps colouring judgements because of factional affiliations.
Apart from the good this thread did in relaying the fact that the game was called off, this thread epitomises all that is wrong with social media type things: it's a sort of web version of Chinese whispers on steroids, where baseless assertions are picked up by some (who probably will never know any better) and moulded or reiterated as incontrovertible facts.
First, the only person who can call off a game is a referee. It has nothing to do with the club, or the ground staff. So people who blamed the club (and there were some, if not on here then on other SM platforms) are just plain ignorant, not least because the club doesn't own the ground or get it ready for match days.
The facts of the situation are clear, as made clear in the respective press releases of the two clubs. Yes, in these times of instant/rolling news, it might have been better if, at the time the match was called off, the media had put out the respective managers' comments on the decision, rather than waiting for official press releases the following day (but it was the MM Cup after all). I think the Argus should have been aware of this when they ran their "social media storm" piece early that evening, where it seemed almost all the selected commenters were blaming the club for the postponement. But that's another matter, and it was by the multi-media team, not the football people (a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or just not caring?). Having said that, the Argus did do a good
piece with photograph showing a clearly frozen surface behind the goal (astroturf not grass though). Ipso facto, since ice melts at zero, the ground temperature (in parts at least) was at or below freezing, despite some people's assertions that it can't have been.
For the game to have been called off early, i.e. before Leicester and their supporters set off, it would have to have been called off around midday. That would have been a difficult/impossible call seeing as the weather forecast was generally a warming through the afternoon.
The ref inspected at 5. It was OK. It was officially safe for players and playable.
Unless one has incontrovertible evidence that the referee failed in their duty in some respect at the 5 o'clock inspection, then it is remiss (that's me putting it kindly) to characterise them as incompetent/failing in their duty (which is the safety of players)/some other blame-the-ref meme. Pitch inspections by referees (certainly at our level) do not involve cursory glances. They generally involve donning boots and using a ball, and visiting all parts of the playing surface (and non-playing surfaces if ground conditions warrant it).
It's quite conceivable that at 5 the very top surface had begun to defrost/was defrosted and took some sort of stud yet the ground at greater depth still to be frozen solid. It might have been preferable to have the frost covers put back on after the initial inspection, to be on the safe side, but the pitch has to be prepared and so it might not be possible to have done so given the 2-hour time frame to KO.
It is also conceivable that given the low sun this time of year, the enclosed nature of this (and most) football grounds meaning solar access is limited, and the fact that it had been subzero a lot of the time between Saturday and Tuesday (especially in sheltered spots) that frost had penetrated an inch or two down and at that an hour or so after the sun had gone down the top surface had begun to refreeze because of conditions below the superficial level and the microclimate in the ground (for which a general weather forecast will not take account of) -- see the Argus photo linked above -- meaning the ground temperature was now at zero or below and then had difficulty taking a stud at ~6:30-ish.
Hence it being called off late. Nothing to do with the club, and outside the referee's control. Just the bloody winter weather!
Questions of the ground staff might be warranted though, in terms of whether the frost covers were taken off too early (but they have to be off for the inspection, and it passed inspection), not put back on when they could/should have been (but as noted, they have to prepare the ground, and they can't do that with the covers on), and whether the covers are adequate and to what temperature they are effective. They've clearly been effective before (we've had frost and played in temperatures close to zero most winters we've been at RP), so without additional info I presume they are generally suitable for something like down to –4C-ish. Did something go wrong or was it just the weather?
Perhaps we should have done what Altrincham once did, and driven cars onto the frozen parts and left them running to thaw the pitch.
And on the subject of cars, to those who say 'but my car's temperature readout said it was above freezing' I ask:
1. Where is the temperature sensor located on your car?
2. Is it picking up heat from within your engine compartment? (Possibly, depending on its location.)
3. Is it picking up re-radiated heat from the road surface? Most likely it will be. Large parts of the road surface will have been absorbing heat during the day and then they re-radiate it at night, and so the thermistor will perceive the 'road temperature', which will actually be warmer than the actual air temperature. This may indeed be among the reasons why the frost symbol appears in my dash readout once the thermistor output 'detects a temperature' of 4C. It might be an indication to expect frozen surfaces when the sensor is reading out a temperature above zero.
And don't think they are anything like accurate until you've done 3 or 4 miles (which might not be applicable in this case, of course).
