Marsh Manipulation!

Another of those wee ‘incidents’ that only seem to happen in the Irish league occurred last weekend. Ballymena Reserves were to play Newry City Reserves in Newry last Saturday. United manager Tommy Wright thought this would be a good game for Phil Charnock to prove his fitness and duly flew the Englishman over for the game. Newry’s first team meanwhile were involved in an Irish cup tie away to Coleraine. Bearing this in mind, they called a referee in on Friday morning at 9am, 30 hours before the match was due to take place and he declared the ground unplayable. The ground quite possibly was unplayable at that juncture, but in another 30 hours it could easily have been in excellent condition. So was the match postponed in order to leave Newry’s ground in good condition if their cup match with Coleraine ended in a draw, therefore necessitating a replay? In the end their match was drawn and a replay was necessary on Tuesday last. Thankfully though their subterfuge did them absolutely no good as they lost their cup game in a penalty shoot-out. So a kind of poetic justice was done, in my opinion and Newry gained nothing by their alleged underhand methods. Surely their must be some criteria laid down for the inspection of grounds and for the ‘earliest’ time they can be called off. It would also be nice if we could have a latest time, instead of making a fruitless journey to far away places like Dungannon (as United fans have done in the past), only to learn the match was called off 40 minutes before kick-off. No true fan wants to see their team being asked to perform in dangerous conditions, but there is no need to wrap players in ‘cotton wool’, after all it is a ‘mans’ game. Maybe in fact the referee who is down to officiate at the game should be asked to report an hour earlier than at present and then he can judge whether the match goes ahead or not. He should be more impartial than a local man who could be swayed, as in most cases he has close links to his local club. This is one of those little ‘niggly’ things which has to be dealt with, as the old saying goes, ‘look after the little things and the big things will take care of themselves’!