Cassidy confident of pitch quality (From Swindon Advertiser)

SWINDON TOWN: Cassidy confident of pitch quality

9:30pm Thursday 17th January 2013 in Sport

HEAD groundsman Marcus Cassidy has stressed that the County Ground pitch is in good condition ahead of Saturday’s League One clash between Swindon Town and Shrewsbury.

Frost covers have sat on top of the playing surface for five days and have kept out most of the cold ahead of the forecasted blizzards on Friday.

With the stadium and surrounding area gritted on Thursday, the club are quietly confident that the game will go ahead and Cassidy echoed those sentiments when quizzed by the Advertiser on Thursday.

“The pitch is quite good at the moment. We’ve had the frost covers down since last Saturday,” he said. “The temperatures have dropped to minus three or minus four at most and the covers work to minus five or minus six, so at the moment it was a bit crisp after Tuesday night but I’ve checked it and it’s nice and soft.

“Tomorrow we’ve got quite a bit of snow coming in apparently, so we’re going to keep an eye on the weather in the afternoon.

“We’ve got the shovels ready, we’ve got a tractor and trailer coming in to remove the snow and we’ve got staff on standby so hopefully we should be clear maybe Friday night, if not Saturday morning.

“Mark Isaacs, the stadium and operations manager, is putting things in place. We’re gritting all the stadium so that shouldn’t be a problem either.

“Hopefully the snow won’t be as bad as they say and it should all be good to go ahead.”