CHAIRMAN Kelvin Thomas said the club had been in constant discussion with the stadium company about getting Saturday’s game with Rushden on because of last week’s bad weather.

And the Oxford United chief admitted that he was “shocked” that the match did not go ahead.

“There should be an expectation that a game like this can go ahead,” he said.

“I don’t think there was a breakdown in communication at all.

“We were in constant dialogue with the stadium company and their ground staff about the importance of this game and, at the end of the day, the pitch was not ready for play as appropriate.

“It was a game we were all looking forward to, and for it not to go ahead is shocking to say the least.

“Once again our fans were coming out in numbers, with a crowd of 10,000-plus expected, and I am very sorry if people feel let down.

“I feel terrible about it, the club feels terrible about it.

“There is going to be a financial consequence of this for us as a football club, but it’s more than just about the financial consequence, it’s about the disappointment that so many fans feel. Our fans have been fantastic all season.

“We’re going to have to look at ways of making sure this kind of thing never happens again.

“Basically, we are paying for a service, and we haven’t got that service when we really needed it.

“There are going to be some serious questions asked about the preparation of the pitch for this fixture. We’re going to do our best to make sure we find out what went wrong, and put it right.

“It’s bad organisation and we as a football club have got to take some responsibility. Maybe we should have forced the issue even more.”

Responding to some supporters’ anger that the club had lost a lot of goodwill, Thomas said: “I hope they don’t feel that way, and we’ve all got to focus on the bigger picture.

“We’re not trying to shy away from anything, but we don’t think we’ve made a bad decision in this affair, our hands are tied by what we can do. We have to put some trust in who’s doing the pitch.

“I do understand the referee’s decision in the end, because it’s about the consistency of the surface.

“You had some soft areas and some harder areas. He did give it a chance, but it didn’t make it.

“It’s a disgrace that the game didn’t go ahead, but we’ve got to dust ourselves down and move on.”

Referee Brendan Malone said he had no option.

“Players’ safety was paramount,” he said. “I made the decision for safety reasons – players would have got injured.

“I also had to take into account the high level of people that were coming to the game.

“For me to come out and call it off at 3 o’clock would not have been a wise thing to do.”

United’s players and officials had worked hard through the morning to try to get the surface right, the club’s youth-team players helping to fork the harder patches.

While they were in early doing that, however, the groundstaff did not turn up until 11.30am, it was claimed.