Greg Abbott on Tuesday night
United manager Greg Abbott spoke to us this morning about the Tuesday evening postponement at Gigg Lane.
He said: “I think your immediate thoughts in any situation like that are with your fans.
“Obviously we have to get the players together and get organised for the fact that a game we expected to play was taken away, but we were there to do our jobs. The fans have taken time out of their days – some of them from work and family – to come along and watch their team and you do feel for them.
“People look for blame in situations like that but I think that one was down to the weather. It had rained a little bit during the day but it was fairly clear outside while we were having our pre-match meal.
“I think it really started to throw it down just after 5pm and there was just no let-up. We had Dolly [Neil Dalton] and the lads at the ground setting up and they contacted me at about quarter to six to say that the pitch had started to hold a lot of water.
“The referee [Mark Brown] kept a close eye on it and when he took a ball out 40 minutes later it wouldn’t run or bounce in some areas. For that reason he had no choice but to call it off. The rain was very heavy and there was no sign of that changing.
“Like I say, we cope with that. We used Wednesday to give the lads a bit of rest because it has been hectic for us. They’ll be back in training tomorrow [Thursday] and our focus will be on the trip to Walsall at the weekend.
“The disruption for us is that we wanted to play a game. We had trained and prepared for 90 minutes of football and the lads were all hoping the game would go ahead.
“We saw quite a few fans at the ground when we pulled up and they seemed to find out that there was a real problem at the same time as we did. We do genuinely feel sorry for them and you just wish there had been some way we could have got the game on. Sometimes though the weather takes over and there’s not much anyone can do about that.”
