Victoria Park ‘playable’ after Hartlepool United offered match switch with Dagenham & Redbridge prior to postponement

Hartlepool United – looking at the freezing forecast throughout the week leading up to Saturday’s National League match at Dagenham & Redbridge – offered to reverse the fixture and play it at Victoria Park to ensure it went ahead.

But Dagenham remained confident in the game going ahead at the Chigwell Construction Stadium, a ground where they have had very few weather related postponements in recent years.

So when the match was postponed little over an hour before kick-off due to a frozen pitch, the Daggers were left looking slightly red faced.

To rub more salt into the wounds, the match probably would have gone ahead had it been rearranged to take place at Victoria Park.

“The weather is difficult at the moment but we would have put the covers on and I’d suggest The Vic would have been playable given the forecast we’ve had,” Hartlepool manager Dave Challinor told The Mail.

“It’s hindsight and something that we tried to do but you can’t force teams to travel up to us and from Dagenham’s perspective they’d just had two long away trips to Wrexham and Notts County."

Despite his frustration with the match being postponed, Challinor admitted he couldn’t really blame Dagenham for turning down Pools’ offer to play the match at The Vic.

"Asking for them to travel again was a big ask you I can see why they wouldn’t want to switch the game,” he added.

"We were speaking to Dagenham’s chief executive who has been there a long time and he could count on one hand the number of games that they had postponed due to the weather at their ground.

"They were obviously very apologetic towards us and embarrassed with the decision that has been made due to the upheaval we’ve had to endure.

"Dagenham were put into that situation on Friday when the match referee looked at the pitch. Once he says it’s playable, it’s not their prerogative to disagree with someone whose job it is to make those decisions.

"The worrying thing comes when you speak to Dagenham’s ground staff who aren’t at fault but they’re saying the pitch was in a worse condition on Friday.

“It’s very poor judgement from the match officials in my opinion.”

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