CONTRACTORS have assured Accrington Stanley that their troublesome Crown Ground pitch will be ready for Tuesday’s home game against Crewe after starting work to install temporary drains.

Stanley’s match against Southend was the only game in all four divisions to be called off on Saturday after continuing drainage problems with a new playing surface that cost the club £70,000 last summer.

But pitch contractor Derrick Crane has told the Lancashire Telegraph that difficulties were always possible this season because the drainage work is not scheduled to be completed until the end of the current campaign.

That will come at an additional cost of around £10,000 but the contractors are working for free for the next few days to gravel band the pitch and allow it to cope with the final 11 home games this season, with one particular area of the playing surface having been heavy in recent weeks.

“We’ll be working on it for the next few days and it will be fine for Tuesday,” said Crane.

“We’re putting in some temporary drains that will see them through to the end of the season.

“The main drainage went in last summer but the secondary drainage was always scheduled to go in in May.

“You can’t do that on a new pitch, you have to give it 12 months. Once that happens it will be like a completely new pitch.

“It’s a three-year programme to install a new pitch and people perhaps don’t understand that.

“It’s just been unlucky because of the frost and then the bad weather.”

The Football League have contacted Stanley to find out the reasons for their pitch problems but chief executive Rob Heys says switching games to an alternative venue was never on the cards.

“If the contractors hadn’t been good enough to come back in it might have been something we’d have had to look at, but it’s not something we’ve ever seriously considered,” said Heys, who also expects work on the Coppice Terrace extension to be finished in time for Tuesday’s game.

“It should be fine for the rest of the season and we always knew we were going to have to find about £10,000 for the work in the summer.

“But that should be the final piece of the jigsaw and will give us a pitch to be proud of.”