City Want Re-Arranged Game To Start With Them In Front

Following Rotherham United for more than fifty years hasn’t been without controversy from point deductions, fielding ineligible players, moving out of the town etc and now I can add Saturday’s postponement to the list.

Yes, I’ve been at games that have been postponed in the past, though, never at the New York Stadium, but I can’t remember being at one where the opposition have had a lead, (though, I have to admit, the memory is getting hazy these days).

I don’t think even Noah would have had a message about an impending flood during the first half of the game, though his ark building skills might have helped, but, when all’s said, it was ‘an act of god’. Which is a statement that usually means ‘nobody is to blame and we aren’t paying you out insurance’.

The referee took the players off with just three minutes of the second half being played – well paddled around – realising that you couldn’t kick a ball in the monsoon that had hit the New York Stadium. At that time it was just abandoned. He came out some time afterwards with both managers and a football and not seeming to want to throw the ball onto the pitch the City Manager took the ball of him and skimmed it across the water, presumably trying to say the game could continue. The referee didn’t seem to agree and all three trudged off again and it seems that Mr Langford got in tough with the EFL. Out he came some time later and this time did try to bounce the ball on the pitch – it obviously was never going to come back to his hands and minutes later the announcement came that the game had been postponed.

We all went home, some further than others, listening to the opinions of various fans of why the game should have gone ahead, why the game should have been called off earlier and ‘why on earth do we play with only one up front’.

As far as we were concerned that was that and we’d have to reschedule, presumably some time towards the end of April.

Apparently not. Cardiff City are trying to make a case that the game should continue from where it left off – with forty-two minutes plus stoppage time to play. If you are going to do that then haven’t you also got to say that the teams must start with the same players that were on when the game was called off? Does that mean that you daren’t play those players until the game takes place in case they get injured and can’t play? Daft thoughts I know but . . .

There was a ‘big thing’ going around social media that the EFL were ‘looking into the postponement’ – the Cardiff fans rubbing their hands thinking they would get the three points (which, actually, for a few minutes it seemed the EFL had done that until they rectified the table later on) – but the EFL always look at games that have been postponed.

Now Welsh MP Alun Davies has decided he should get involved telling Wales Online that he thinks ‘Rotherham United should be punished for their alleged role in postponement’ saying, ‘It’s not a kick-around in a park and rain is not an unusual meteorological phenomenon. Rotherham should forfeit the game and lose some points.’ I’m guessing he wasn’t there. And what did he want us to do, have a ‘Wimbledon Tennis’ roof that can be closed when it rains?

I’m quite sure that when the game does go ahead it will start at 0-0 with ninety minutes left – although I do say only ‘quite sure’ because, in football, we never really know what is going to happen do we.

And you know what we say here in Rotherham, it never rains but it pours.