Colchester United Chairman Robbie Cowling has issued the following statement.
Following yet another postponement, I would like to provide some information as to why so many games have been postponed this season and what the club are doing to improve the pitch so that we can fulfil our remaining home fixtures.
Before I do so, I would like to apologise for those games where we provided very late notice of the postponement. Our focus was solely on getting those games played and we have now implemented a better process whereby we still do our best to fix the problem, but we do better to manage it too.
I’m no drainage expert but the pitch at our stadium has never been great in terms of the drainage. I’m sure many of you will remember the problems we had in the initial few seasons when we first moved to the stadium and that was when the pitch had been freshly laid and the drainage system was brand new. The pitch I own at Maldon gets nowhere near the same amount of TLC but drains brilliantly. Layer Road was similar.
The pitch at the stadium sits on a bed of clay and our recent investigations show that the clay bed is just some 10 inches below the surface. That shouldn’t be an issue if the pitch has a well designed and installed drainage system which is working optimally, whilst only being subjected to reasonable amounts of rainfall.
In terms of the pitch maintenance, we use one of the best companies available to us to prepare the pitch at the start of every season. We also have an excellent team of ground staff who work tirelessly to maintain our pitches to the highest standard they can. I say pitches because compared to the days when we only had the excellent pitch at Layer Road to maintain, the ground staff currently look after seven pitches in total.
The team is currently four strong and we have an advert out for a fifth staff member. We also ensure one of the staff members is based full-time at the stadium to ensure that the stadium pitch gets the most care despite being the least used. As primary back-up, we also have staff at Forrester Park golf course who provide their time, expertise, and equipment when it’s needed and as secondary back-up, we have the maintenance staff and ground workers that work for AMG.
And, when we need to get the pitch covers on and off, almost everyone at the club, especially those that work at the stadium, are willing and able to lend a hand.
We do not have an issue with staff levels. Nor do we have an issue with the staff's willingness to get stuck in. We are very fortunate to have such excellent people working at the club and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all for what they have done to date to support the club with this issue.
Like I said to start with, I’m not a drainage expert but I have spoken to several people who are, and they all assure me that there is nothing wrong with the design of the system that was installed when the stadium was built. However, without digging it all up we can’t determine if it is still working optimally. The fact that the very first game of this season was called off would indicate that it was not working optimally on that day. However, the rainfall on that day just before kick-off was torrential so I can’t say so with any certainty.
In terms of rainfall levels, we are all aware that this winter, these have not just exceeded normal levels but have substantially exceeded all-time levels and Colchester United are not the only club that are postponing games because of it. We currently have the same number of games left to play as a number of other teams in our league. We are working with the EFL to ensure they are aware of the measure we are taking to resolve the current issue which I have every confidence that we will do.
In the very short-term, we remain at the mercy of the weather. A lot of work went into making the pitch playable for tonight’s game, but the timing and extent of today’s rainfall showed us no such mercy. Thanks to considerable effort from the staff again this morning, we were able to get the pitch covered again and the current weather forecast indicates that we will be able to remove the covers tomorrow morning. It is supposed to remain dry for a couple of days which will provide us with some time to work on the pitch before covering it and uncovering it again before Saturday’s scheduled game against Walsall.
The club will continue to work tirelessly for the remainder of the season to ensure we get the games played.
At the end of this season, we already have plans to undertake major works to improve the drainage. The rainfall this winter may have exceeded historic records, but I fear they are the new normal levels, and we will need to cope better with such levels of rainfall in the future.
Up the U’s
Robbie
