Ford claims early postponement was for the fans (From Swindon Advertiser)

SWINDON ROBINS: Foord claims early postponement was for the fans

6:00am Thursday 18th October 2012 in Sport

POOLE promoter Matt Ford took the early decision to call off last night’s Elite League final second leg to help Sky Sports and travelling fans avoid wasting their money.

The meeting was called off just before midday yesterday despite covers being put on the track overnight, after Ford consulted a variety of weather forecasts and concluded there was 100 per cent chance of rain.

That rain arrived close to 2.30pm, and Ford was happy to stick by his decision.

“The decision was made rather than upsetting all of the travelling fans and people who would have paid to come in and, potentially, have an evening cut short,” he said.

“There was more of a chance of running the fixture on Friday with the forecast as it is so the decision was made to try to run it then.”

“The track was okay. When we went in this morning, of course there were puddles on the parts that weren’t covered but that was easily solve-able.

“If we could have ridden the meeting at noon, it would not have been a problem at all.

“I did an interview live on Sky Sports at 2.45pm and the rain absolutely bucketed down. The track took a substantial amount of rain after that but, again, nothing that wouldn’t have been solve-able.

“An awful lot of money is wasted by the production team at BSkyB when they broadcast these postponed events, so a decision was made to try to alleviate the costs for everybody and to try to keep the fans on-side, rather than them making what would seemingly have been a wasted journey.”