Carlisle United managing director John Nixon spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria on Friday evening as he talked about the disappointing postponment of the Swansea game at Brunton Park tomorrow due to a frozen pitch :
" There was a always a chance of the game being off. We had frost last Saturday and we put the covers on immediately after the Leyton Orient game and they stayed on all week. The problem is that we've had six days and seven nights of frost so we just hoped that we could have contained it by keeping the covers on. Because any chance to take them off of course would have left the dampness in and it would have frozen again at night.
" We did try bringing in industrial heating this morning but it wasn't sufficient to get the level of frost out of the ground. The covers went straight on after the last kick really because they didn't even get a lot of work done on the pitch. They knew that it was freezing at that point in time and they put the covers on immediately, that is the best way to try to protect the ground to get the covers on.
" We were fully aware that Swansea were flying at about 5pm tonight and leaving Swansea City at 3.30pm. We would have not liked to have been in a position had we travelled to Swansea that somebody had called us on the Saturday morning and said that it was off. So we did try to get an early decision and of course we have been watching the weather all week.
" The whole pitch was frozen actually at the end of the day but really our Warwick Road End gets the least sun and that tends to be our vulnerable area. That was the one that was covered absolutely immediately, literally by 5.30pm last Saturday night. It is disappointing from the financial side but we've only actually lost two matches, this one and Nottingham Forest, but of course it feels like we have had the odd Saturday off because we are not in the FA Cup anymore.
" So I think we've got an impression rather than a fact but it's two we've lost. Of course all the tickets that we have sold this week so far for Swansea are valid for a Tuesday night, although if anyone has bought tickets because people are coming up this weekend then they can pop into the office tomorrow morning and we will give them a refund.
" Swansea were scheduled to bring about 350-400 travelling fans, they are not big travelling supporters. The pipework is in for the undersoil heating that's for sure, but we don't have any boiler system and we haven't taken the investment of putting a boiler system in that can feed the hot water into the 21 or 22 miles of undersoil pipework.
" Now that pipework was put in because it was at the right time to do it when we were doing the pitch and renewing the pitch. You get one shot at it and we did it and I think it was a wise thing to do, now we've got to get together the money to put together the investment, that will be quite substantial, to put a boiler system in. "