Catalans V Hull Fc

OK, let's start at the beginning and add a little perspective...

The winds come in Perpignan usually for 2-3 days, they've been here for 3 weeks at least, this has a negative effect on the grass, twofold, 1- it dries out the soil and 2 it "burns" the grass (like the wind attacking your face non-stop for 3 weeks, its not gonna be a pretty sight)

The ground isn't owned by the club, and the club have no say as to who the ground keeper is, they've been trying to get rid of the current guy for 2 years, so have no control as to what happens on the field at all.

Because reparation work has been needed since the last friendly, the club has not trained on the pitch, but at the local university in the hope that the pitch will have had the correct groundworks done to it, these have not been carried out by the ground keeper.

On Friday after the referee arrived in France he attended the stadium to look at the pitch and deemed the game playable.

Now the pitch was 95% playable on Saturday, what has happened is the ground was deemed by the Catalans to be too hard, so the ground keeper watered the pitch on Friday night after the previous pitch inspection by Bentham, because the ground ws hard, the water 'pooled' in certain areas and overnight froze, there was no concern at the time as the ground keeper thought these would melt and disperse as the sun melted them. The main area of concern was a 20 metre square (ish) area under the main stand (Bonzom), this area of the pitch did not get any sunlight so did not melt. Every other area of the pitch was playable.

It was at this time (around lunchtime) that Trent Robinson called Hull to say that he had concerns over the pitch, both coaches and CEO's attended a 2pm pitch inspection with the RFL officials and decided to call the game off. There was talk of taking it to the Aime Giral to play on Sunday morning but their pitch was worse with the ice than Brutus.

It is harsh on the fans that travelled over, but I got to the stadium yesterday at 1:30pm and left at 8:30pm after the club had looked at all options available to them. Yes it is a pain in the backside, but after speaking to the RFL today, it is clear that they feel all three parties were a victim of circumstances.

The ironic thing is that the pitch is probably harder in July and August than it was yesterday, it was just the pooling of the water that froze and didn't defrost that caused the issue. I have sent some pictures of the affected areas to the League Express, you will be able to see that the pitch was too dangerous to play on.

Hope that helps some of you to understand the reasonings as to why the game was called off, and for the record, one of the RFL bylaws states that the game can only be called off in the 24 hours preceeding the kick-off time.