Crewe Alexandra chairman Charles Grant has told the club’s official website that he is ‘hugely disappointed’ that today’s game against Portsmouth was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch just before 2pm – but he understands that the referee had a difficult decision to make.
The referee Martin Coy made the judgement call for safety concerns of the players, although both Crewe Alexandra manger David Artell and Portsmouth manager, Danny Cowley, wanted to give it the best possible chance of drying up sufficiently to play an hour later.
The chairman told crewealex.net: “It was handled in accordance with the normal way of things and the referee has a tough job and a decision to make. He made that decision at that point of time, if we had been able to give it a bit longer then our ground staff had made the call that the pitch would be playable. The referee wasn’t able to take the decision to postpone it any longer in his view and there were an awful lot of Portsmouth fans ready to come in.
“As we know at Crewe and our staff know, from Colchester a couple of years ago. The pitch can be flooded at quarter to three and then we can play on it at half past three, perfectly well.
“That will be some of the input that will be send back to the EFL and the FA. It is disappointing for everyone, especially those supporters who have travelled, but we also respect the referees’ decision because he has difficult job.
He added: “At the end of the day, it is all about the supporters and we have an awful lot of disappointed supporters and most our supporters understand our pitch, like Danny and his staff understand our pitch and as we speak towards what would have been kick off time, it is all drying out.
“We have got a lot of upset supporters but I also feel upset for those Portsmouth supporters, who have travelled up to Crewe and come up through those storm conditions and they have had to wait around in the rain waiting for that decision.
"I am sure the referee may be on the way home thinking, have I made the right call there?"