Football looked set to return to Harmsworth Park this weekend until barely a half hour until kick off when an overbearing referee decided to take matters into his own hands and force a sixth consecutive postponement upon Academy.
After some unfortunate snowfall during the night, club officials and volunteers had worked tirelessly on the pitch throughout the morning to get the pitch in a playable condition and were subsequently given the green light.
The Strathspey Thistle team bus arrived, fans were on their way to the ground, match programmes and 50/50s were presumably printed and pies would have been prepared.
Wasted efforts on little details such as those pile up and end up costing small, tightly run clubs like Academy a lot of money, all because one referee decided to ignore these issues and the long and expensive journey of the away side.
Would it have really been too much to ask the players to at least attempt to play the game? I’m sure the surface was far from pristine but this is the Highland League we’re talking about, not the World Cup final.
The game would likely not have been the greatest spectacle but I’m sure most fans would have just been glad to see one taking place as with our next scheduled home fixture not taking place until the 14th of February, it will be over two months without any Highland League action in Caithness.
Gordon Connelly was featured in the local newspaper on Friday calling for investments to be made into a new ground being built with a state-of-the-art 4G pitch to avoid a repeat of the farcical scenes of this winter.
Perhaps a pipe dream based on the fact that it would require access to the controversial Wick Academy Development Fund, it is nonetheless a topic which warrants serious consideration.
Whilst personally I am not a fan of these fake pitches and would rather advocate improvements (such as undersoil heating) being made to the Harmsworth instead, if the fussiness of referees continues to increase it would be hard to argue against such a switch taking place.