Birmingham City begin their FA Cup campaign with a trip to League Two Cambridge United this weekend.
Cambridge United’s stadium manager claims the League Two club is doing everything it can to ensure Saturday’s FA Cup fixture against Birmingham City goes forward.
The United States’ home match against Grimsby Town on Sunday was called off due to a frozen field, and Neil Harris’ side will face Blues this weekend.
Temperatures have risen significantly since the weekend, but with rain forecast for the coming days, Ian Darler is concerned about a wet pitch at the Cledara Abbey Stadium.
There is still hope that Saturday’s 5.45pm kickoff will go ahead, but Darler told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire on Tuesday that the weather might still have an impact.
“It [Sunday] was the first time we had lost a game in over 15 years, which is a significant accomplishment given the volunteers we have here; we are not one of the larger clubs in the country with undersoil heating.
“The conditions at the Grimsby fixture were extremely harsh. We removed the blankets, and the pitch was obviously playable, but within an hour and a half to two hours, the wind cold killed us, which was quite disheartening given how much planning had gone into getting us to a good place.
“We need to move forward from it. We’re doing our best; TV crews are in here setting up scaffolding, so they must be cheerful; we must remain so as well.
“We now have parts of the stadium frozen; people will be excited if they look at the forecast and say, ‘Plus four – that’s good.'” However, when you check a little farther down, it says, ‘But feels like minus one, but feels like minus two’.
“All we need is a drastic change in temperature. That might happen starting Thursday; it depends on whether we receive snow or rain, as they are talking about a lot of moisture in some form.
“If it does rain, we hope it is milder, but we do need the frost to come out because the pitch is currently really hard, and if we receive 10-15mm of rain or anything, it will sit on top of ice.
“That becomes another issue we have to deal with because then the pitch will obviously be waterlogged.”
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