Paul Simpson responds to postponement of Carlisle United v Barrow AFC

The Blues trained on the artificial surface at Harraby today after the League Two clash fell victim to a frozen pitch.

Simpson will bring his players back in tomorrow for another session as attention quickly turns to United’s next game at Northampton Town next Saturday.

United’s boss, meanwhile, says the club did all they could to try and beat the freeze this weekend.

“We delayed training today until a decision was made, because the referee was due to get here at 11am,” Simpson said.

“That determined what we were going to do.

READ MORE: Carlisle United v Barrow postponed

“We knew if the game was off it gave us the opportunity to give them a couple of days of a blast of fitness work, so we’ve done quite a heavy session today at Harraby on the artificial pitch.

“The players will be back in Saturday morning, it will be a normal training day, and we’ll start again on Monday and go again.

“Hopefully this little hiccup in terms of the fixtures doesn’t do us any harm going into Northampton next week.”

Referee Andrew Kitchen deemed the Brunton Park pitch unplayable today after temperatures fell to -6 overnight.

It means the first Cumbrian league derby of the season will have to be rearranged, most likely to a midweek date.

Simpson said: “As a football club we did everything we can to get it on, all the office staff and ground staff put the covers on on Tuesday.

“The covers work as far down as -5, is what I’m told, but it’s obviously been a lot colder than that. You just have to look around the whole country and you can see that it’s been biting cold weather just about everywhere.

“Sadly our game has suffered but it won’t surprise me to see a few more postponements with the way it’s going to be between now and tomorrow.

“We even put the pieces of Geofleece down on the vulnerable areas, and it made a bit of a difference, but the pitch was deemed to be unsafe by the referee and we have to accept that.

“I agree with him, it didn’t look safe to me. And also when you take the forecast into account as well, we probably have an hour between now and the 1pm kick-off where it goes to zero or above. The rest of the time it’s below that and there’s no chance of the frost getting out of the pitch.”

Simpson said it was disappointing not to be able to take on Barrow this weekend in front of a good Brunton Park crowd.

A section of the frozen pitch at Brunton Park (Image: Amy Nixon / CUFC)

“It was set up to be a really good game – both teams up in those top places, both going really well, we knew we were going to get good backing from our supporters” he said.

“We’re just going to have to save it for another day. There’s nothing we can do about it. I hope we’re still in a strong position when the game comes round – not really bothered where they [Barrow] are – and let’s wait and see when it is.”

Simpson said the weather would determine where United are able to train on Saturday.

As for how the postponement affects the next period of training, he said: “It doesn’t change anything really.

“We will train on Saturday, it won’t be the same physical output as we’d get from a match day, so the good thing is we don’t have to think about a recovery, we can work them Monday and Tuesday, and we can get everything we need out of the sessions.

“Once we get past the training tomorrow, the fact we’ve got no game doesn’t come into my head, it’s about preparing properly for next week and making sure the players go into the Northampton game with a clear idea of how we want to approach that one and hopefully in a good physical state as well.”

United will hope next weekend’s trip to Northampton does not suffer the same fate, with temperatures set to remain below zero for much of next week.

“Hopefully the weather in Northampton will be favourable, even though we have been told that it’s not destined to be great at the end of the week,” added Simpson.

“Let’s just hope we’re down south and it’s a little bit of a different climate…”