Caley Thistle manager John Robertson concedes tomorrow’s Championship fixture against Morton is unlikely to go ahead.
The low temperatures in the Highlands in recent days has frozen the Caledonian Stadium surface, which caused the postponement of Wednesday’s game against Alloa Athletic.
A new date of Tuesday, February 23 has been set for that match, with a 7pm kick-off.
⚽️ Fixture amendment
📆 Tuesday February 23
🏆 Scottish Championship
⌚️ Kick-off 7.00pm
▪️New date for game postponed on Wednesday February 10
— spflnews (@spflnews) February 11, 2021
With further snowfall since Wednesday’s call-off, Robertson reckons the forecasted rise in temperatures over the coming days will not come soon enough for Saturday’s visit of the Ton.
Robertson is more hopeful about the prospect of Wednesday’s game against Queen of the South going ahead however.
He said: “I would be very surprised if the match went ahead.
“It’s not just the melting of the snow to begin with, it’s the frost that’s already into the ground.
“By Wednesday next week it should be fine, everything should be back to normal, and we can crack on.
“From Saturday onwards the weather goes up to a tropical 8 degrees so we will be fine for Wednesday.
“Unfortunately the warmer temperatures may just come a little bit too late for this game.
“Had it started at 7 or 8 degrees on Thursday, we would have had a chance.
“It’s still going to be cold today though, with one degree possibly the highest on Saturday. I don’t think that’s going to get the frost out of the ground.”
Inverness’ trip to Dundee last weekend was called off the day before the game was scheduled to take place, with Robertson keen to take Morton’s travelling distance from Greenock into consideration by making an early decision on tomorrow’s fixture.
Robertson added: “Many a time we have phoned the league on a Friday to say there is no chance of the game being on, but they want to leave it until the last possible moment to give it every chance.
“We tend to have the local referee Billy Baxter in here at 8 or 9am on a Saturday morning, when he could easily be here at 3 or 4pm on a Friday afternoon to tell them exactly what he’s going to tell them the next day.
“But the league want to give the games as much time as they can.
“When there’s travelling involved, we would far rather Morton know the day before the game than wait until Saturday morning to tell them what is probably inevitable.”
Should the Morton game be postponed it would mean an 11th call off for the Highlanders since Boxing Day, with a busy catch up schedule now lying ahead of them.
Robertson insists Caley Jags have been powerless to prevent the succession of postponements, having only played two midweek away matches in 2021 so far.
He added: “This year we have been very unfortunate as we had Morton and Arbroath, which were both cancelled away from home when our pitch was perfectly playable.
“Had the fixtures fallen the other way we could have played them, we could easily be sitting up to date.
“We scheduled three home games in a week, and then got hit with the worst temperatures since 1990.
“That’s just sod’s law. We will deal with it. It’s not a major concern to me at the moment.”
