Knights left out in cold on opening day (From York Press)

Knights left out in cold on opening day

8:56am Monday 1st February 2010

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YORK City Knights general manager Ian Wilson has questioned the wisdom of starting the season in the height of winter after the first weekend of fixtures was severely hit by the weather.

The Knights’ opening Northern Rail Cup group game away to Rochdale Hornets yesterday was postponed on the morning of the match due to a frozen Spotland pitch, with the clubs hoping to rearrange the tie for either tomorrow evening or Wednesday evening. Confirmation of the new date was due today.

It was one of seven Northern Rail Cup openers to fall foul of the weather and Wilson believes the season for Championship and Championship One clubs should start later – especially as professional rugby league is now branded a summer sport.

He said: “The season has started a week earlier than last year due to the Four Nations being played down under at the end of the campaign – though I don’t see how that affects clubs in the Championships.

“We’ve got a few free weekends as well, like we did last year, and I don’t see why it has to start so early. We’ve just got to go along with it.”

The Knights also suffered early postponements last year when their home match against Whitehaven was called off due to the wintry weather and replayed the following midweek.

That had a negative effect on the attendance.

There were calls then for the season to begin later, and the current start date has also been criticised by various rival clubs.

Wilson added: “It’s not ideal. You don’t want to have games cancelled and start the season already having to catch up.”

Wilson said the team were disappointed they had to wait to get into competitive action. Instead, they had a day off, with the club deciding not to bother arranging a training session at short notice.

“Obviously we wanted to play,” said Wilson. “We were looking forward to the first game but now it creates a backlog of fixtures already.”

He added: “By the time the message (about the postponement) had got round it would have been unfeasible to arrange a training session. The pitch at Huntington Stadium might have been frozen anyway.”

Yesterday’s match was called off at about 10am after an inspection by referee Robert Hicks, who hails from nearby Oldham. Although the Hornets had been confident at the back end of last week that the game would go ahead, the surface was deemed too hard to be safe following a deep overnight frost in which temperatures were around minus-five degrees.

The clubs could face a problem to rearrange the match if it does not go ahead this week, as the Knights have a friendly against Leeds Rhinos a week on Wednesday, while they have a reserves friendly, arranged recently, against Hull FC the following Thursday – ruling out both those weeks.

The Hornets also share Spotland with promotion-chasing Rochdale FC and, while there would no problems in playing the game tomorrow or Wednesday as the League Two club are in action tonight, there might be a fixture clash in the coming weeks.

Wilson added: “They share (the ground) with the football club and so will have to find when it’s available.”

If the game is not rearranged for this week, the silver lining for the Knights would be that they begin their season with a plum home game against Championship big-guns Leigh Centurions next Sunday.

However, Wilson said: “I don’t think it really matters (to start at home). Ideally we would like to get off to a winning start – that’s the most important thing and hopefully we can do that in midweek and go into the Leigh game with three points.”

Keep checking The Press’ website, thepress.co.uk, for details of the rearrangement. We will post the new details as soon as they are confirmed.

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