Hartlepool United 'given assurances' Dagenham & Redbridge match will go ahead as planned after offering venue switch due to freezing temperatures

Pools’ last two National League away matches have been postponed as a result of the adverse weather conditions sweeping across England.

Keen to avoid a third postponement this month, Hartlepool contacted Dagenham to propose a potential venue change to Victoria Park should there be any doubts on the game going ahead.

But The Daggers are understood to have taken the appropriate precautions and assured Pools that they expect Saturday’s match at The Chigwell Construction Stadium to go ahead at 3pm on Saturday afternoon.

“I’m really hopeful the game will go ahead,” Challinor said.

“We looked at the weather forecast earlier in the week and we contacted Dagenham on Monday because every club in this league is in a different situation, some have frost covers and others don’t.

"We told them we’ve got our frost covers and were happy to work on our pitch and get the game on at The Vic if necessary. They’ve assured us that they’ve got covers over the full pitch and their pitch is soft so if that remains the case then I’m confident that the game will be on.”

Many clubs across the National League have switched venues in order to get matches played with Pools willing to propose such changes if necessary.

"With reversing fixtures and stuff like that, the difficulty now is that some teams we’ve already played so would clubs be willing to travel and go through that expense to come to us when they’ve already been up here?

"In terms of Dagenham, we haven’t played them home or away so we had an opportunity to be flexible to give us the best chance of the game going ahead.

"You would have never thought our game would have been played on Tuesday yet our pitch was probably in the best condition it's been in for the past couple of months.

"With the amount of games we have to complete, getting games played is massively important because you don’t want to risk being forced to play four games in the space of seven days.

"If we can get games played then why wouldn’t you? That’s why we contacted Dagenham and we’d certainly do the same again if we were in a similar situation.”

Given Pools willingness to get the game on, it risks being a very frustrating and very costly outing for the club this weekend should this the match at Dagenham succumb to the weather.

“Hopefully, travelling down there won’t be a wasted journey for us,” Challinor added.

“It’s obviously a long distance for us going down on the Friday. Over the course of the weekend for us to travel down and stay will probably cost us the best part of £5,000.

"You hope that it will go ahead [with Dagenham] having the opportunity and resources to do things right and get the game on and even more so having told us.”

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