Delay to Newport County’s Drainage Works

Without doubt Rodney Parade was the worse pitch in League 2. A huge amount of sand to deal with drainage problems played havoc with ball control and also for Newport County’s finances as they suffered 6 postponements. Not helped that the pitch is shared with Newport Gwent Dragon rugby club.

The work to deal with the drainage problems was due to start next week (12th May) but has had to be postponed due the engineers having other commitments. The £80,000 work was supposed to have been completed last summer but wasn’t. The Dragons were funding a £40,000 irrigation scheme. The work on the problematic end of the pitch was the work that didn’t get completed. It is expected that the work will be completed in time for the visit of Carl Zeiss Jena on 2nd July.

No doubt the problems with the pitch caused issues for Justin Edinburgh’s team, not only from the postponements but also in the style of play they had to adopt. County’s star striker Star striker Aaron O’Connor said:

Having a decent pitch will help us next season. We’ve been labelled as a kick it long team this season but it’s not been easy to get the ball down and play on that surface.

A lot of footballing sides have come here and realised they can’t do that either and they’ve resorted to long ball football. It’s not what the fans want to see and it’s not what the players want either.

Hopefully if the pitch gets sorted and we can look after it a little bit better we can play some good stuff next season.