Referee Grant Hegley has explained his decision to postpone this afternoon’s home game against Watford only 90 minutes before kick-off. With the Town pitch having been covered for the last few days, there had been no previous hint that the match was in any danger and Blues chief executive Simon Clegg expressed his surprise at the call-off, particularly given that the Leicester game went ahead a week ago.
Hegley says he arrived at Portman Road at lunchtime and met with Town groundsman Alan Ferguson: "I turned up at the ground about 12.30pm and immediately spoke to the Ipswich groundsman, he highlighted a number of areas of the pitch that were of concern to him.
"I looked at it and some of it was under thick frost. He said he could work on it so I gave him 45 minutes until 1.15pm - where he put large amounts of salt and boiling water in the hope that it would soften it up.
"Some areas did soften up but unfortunately it became inconsistent where there were still large amounts of frost and soft areas and you have to think of the safety of the player running at full tilt - getting a stud in one area which stops nicely and then the next area where they slip. The safety of the players is of paramount importance to me.
"As a referee we get all the weather forecasts for the area, it was going to go up to a maximum of 1 degree by about 3.30pm and then by 5pm it was forecast to be down to -1 again. So, there was no warmth going to come through, whilst the groundstaff tried their hardest to get it on, it was to no avail.”
Chief executive Clegg sympathised with fans with many already at Portman Road when the decision was taken: "It is very unfortunate and I feel sorry for the supporters who travelled. It seems amazing that the match with Leicester City that was shown worldwide in horrific conditions went ahead and was completed and that this one was called off.
"The situation is entirely down to the referee and he deemed that it was dangerous for players running from the soft area, which was the majority of the ground, to a small area that was harder.
"The groundstaff worked tirelessly to get the pitch as best as they could and we had the protective cover with hot air underneath.
"The last resort was to take buckets of hot water on to the pitch to defrost the hard area along one touchline. But this was freezing.
"I understand people going into the ground will look at the pitch and think it was perfectly playable but the referee decided there was a problem which couldn't be overcome.”
Questions will be asked as to why referee Hegley arrived at the ground quite so near to the scheduled kick-off, last week's official Stuart Attwell having been at Portman Road for his pitch inspection more than five hours before the Leicester match was due to start, and why Town didn't make it clear that the game was in peril once the situation became clear.