Terry Butcher

By FOS Editor
December 2 2010

Terry Butcher believes the SPL has jumped the gun when they took the decision postponing his side's Saturday fixture against Dundee United, along with other five SPL fixtures..

The Inverness Caledonian Thistle boss thinks his team's match against United could have gone ahead. "The A9 is fine and the forecast for us is a positive forecast," said a "bitterly disappointed" Butcher.

"So, for us, there is no reason why the game should be called off. As far as we are concerned, the pitch would have been absolutely perfect on Saturday."

Butcher also believes the SPL should be paying compensation to the Highland club, as they had switched on their undersoil heating when it was unecessary

"If we had known that there was a chance of the game going off, we wouldn't have put the heating on. Five or six thousand pounds to us is a hell of a lot of money."

ICT travelled down to Celtic Park last weekend to extend their unbeaten away run to a calendar year.

"We travelled down to Celtic Park last weekend in worse conditions than supporters will travel up to our game," said Butcher. "Sometimes you want your governing body to be proactive and they have been proactive, but nobody at the club was notified about this until a press man called."

I have some sympathy with the Butcher and the “nanny state” approach of the authorities in this country. Many have travelled to work this week all across the country without too many accidents being announced.

Motherwell are also due to be playing Kilmarnock and the SPL fear the Killie fans need to cross the Fenwick Moor, a route that no one needs to take since the M77 was extended. Indeed Killie fans could travel up the M77 and on to the M8 nowadays.

While I support any attempt to help supporters surely we need to look harder at what can go and what can’t. Motherwell have now lost two home games in successive weekends – and the revenue that goes with it.

Unless we move to Summer football this is something we are going to have to put up with and if we are going to have “adequate pitch protection” then games should go ahead.