THE weather put paid to Barrow AFC’s Saturday plans for the second weekend in succession.

After seeing their match at Guiseley postponed because of a frozen pitch last weekend, the Bluebirds were forced to call off their home game with Sutton United due to waterlogging.

Heavier-than-expected overnight rain across South Cumbria from Friday into Saturday was followed by further substantial downpours in the morning, rendering parts of the Holker Street pitch unplayable.

The club reported that the ground was okay at 9am, but by 11.30am a large area between the centre circle and the Popular Side was saturated, with big puddles forming.

Managing director Andrew Casson said: “It is what it is at the end of the day; we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature with these sort of things.

“With the day we had yesterday, we couldn’t have done a pitch inspection, and when we came down this morning, it looked like it was perfectly fine.

“We just had a ton of rain from 8.30am until 10.30am, and that just finished the pitch off in a number of areas.

“We wanted to get the referee, pitch assessor, down as quickly as possible to make a judgement call, and he did.”

Manager Ady Pennock was due to take in a match against one of AFC’s National League rivals on Saturday afternoon following the postponement.

He, his coaching staff and the players, had spent Friday night in Furness ahead of the game. Sutton fans travelling to the game were already well on their way, with AFC apologising to them for the late nature of the call-off.

One Sutton fan, however, was unlucky enough to miss news of the postponement, and arrived after a 300-mile trip to find the game off .

There have been problems with the affected area of the pitch in recent weeks, with work being done on the pitch to enable the FA Trophy match with Brackley Town to be played 11 days ago, while the surface passed a pitch inspection on the morning of the game with Bromley in November.

Casson said groundsman Gareth Morgan had been hard at work on the area in front of the Popular Side to try to ensure the Sutton game would be played.

However, the weather put paid to nay hopes of it going ahead, with precipitation relentless between Friday evening and Saturday morning.

“I think we could have worked with the overnight rain, if it had finished by eight or nine o’clock,” Casson said. “Gareth was down here and we would have been able to make a difference on it.

“Last week, we had it verti-drained and sanded, and it was better than it was two weeks ago against Brackley. But it was just that two hours of rain that meant it is still sitting out there now, and probably won’t be gone in the next couple of hours.

“I’ve talked to Gareth about it a number of times. No pitch in the world – until you get to the Premier League, with the irrigation and drainage they can install – at this level or the league or two above, can cope with two hours of heavy rain on the morning before a match. That’s just the way it is.

“It is what it is and we have to deal with it. If it had stopped overnight, then I think it would have been fine, but it was just too late in the day.”

The Sutton game will now have to be rearranged, most likely for a midweek date in March.

There is a new date for Barrow’s trip to Guiseley. It will be played on Tuesday, February 27, although if both Sutton and Bromley – Guiseley and AFC’s respective National League opponents – are still in the FA Trophy, it would be moved to Saturday, February 24 instead.