Town manager Kieran McKenna admits the postponement of the Blues’ game at Portsmouth on Tuesday - the second time the match has succumbed to the weather - was frustrating but says there was no way the fixture could have gone ahead given the state of the pitch.

Fratton Park was waterlogged after a heavy overnight deluge which had topped up an already sodden surface with the Portsmouth area having had more than double its usual January rainfall.

The game had initially been scheduled for January 4th but was called off on that occasion due to a frozen pitch.

“It was really frustrating, no doubt about it,” McKenna said regarding the latest fruitless trip to Hampshire. “Once you get to that point, all the work is done - the preparation, the video, the travel, all those things and we just really wanted to play the game.

“But it is what it is, we can’t control it. I’ve spoken quite a few times about my thoughts around infrastructure and pitch quality in this league and pitch reliability.

“We’ve had three games called off [the Blackburn abandonment in September in addition to the two Portsmouth matches] by the start of February and this is really not good enough.

“But it was a really wet day and on this particular occasion, I don’t think it was possible to get the game on.”

Asked how the situation impacted on the rest of the week as the Blues prepared for the trip to Derby on Saturday, McKenna added: “It was tricky, but we’ve made the best of it. We managed to get a pitch down there and, to be fair, Portsmouth helped with getting a 4G pitch.

“We ended up training down there on Tuesday, so we could at least get some work into the players and then we kept the rest of the week’s schedule as it was planned previously.

“It’s not ideal, in terms of putting that travel into a week when we could have had a good training week here, but we have tried to make the best of it.

“I think there are challenges that will come down the line in terms of having a game called off twice, that means it is going to be an incredibly busy games schedule coming up. But we will just have to tackle that head on.”

Photo: TWTD