Dave Oakley feels bemused by Wellington attitude

DEVONPORT Services boss Dave Oakley admitted his frustration when his team were left idle on Saturday after their opponents judged the city club's pitch unsafe to play on.

Many pitches throughout Devon were frozen solid after a week of Arctic-like temperatures and clearly unsafe to play on.

The weather claimed practically every match in Western Counties West and the Cornwall-Devon League, while Devon One and Devon Two were completely wiped out.

One venue, however, apparently defied the conditions – The Rectory, where Devonport Services, plus the referee, decided their pitch was safe for their match with Wellington.

Wellington, however, surprisingly drove 83 miles, inspected the pitch, decided it was not safe for rugby, got back in their vehicles and headed straight back home again.

The areas which worried the Wellington players, it appears, were in the centre circle and a patch near one of the goal-posts, which were apparently too frozen to fall over safely on.

Services director of rugby Dave Oakley, who tested each disputed area with the toe of his boot (with me present), admitted he was unhappy with Wellington's decision to postpone the match, possibly until this coming weekend.

But Oakley said he understood why the match referee could not over-rule the decision of the Wellington players to shelve the game.

"I'm disappointed that a team would have come all the way down here and then refuse to play the game," said Oakley, whose coaching team had carried out a pitch inspection on Saturday morning. "The referee was happy to play the game, his assessor said the pitch was playable and we were happy with it, but they (Wellington) said the pitch was too hard in places.

"If a team says it doesn't want to play, then no referee can over-rule that. In this day and age, because of health and safety considerations, if the referee gives the go-ahead and somebody breaks his neck, then he is up the creek, so he really can't take that risk.

"If, as I suspect, we will be made to play the game this weekend, when we were scheduled to have a free Saturday, then that will cause us some disruption, as that means we will have four teams going – and we are going to struggle to do that."

Further frustration for Services is that their new signing from Brixham – scrum half Corey Moore – didn't get a chance to dirty his boots.

Moore, 21, was originally at Marjon, then Services and then Brixham before electing to rejoin the Devonport club.

Head coach Trevor Brazier said: "Corey's a very talented player and we are glad to have him. He's available until the end of the season and was on our bench.

"The good thing is that not only can he play number 9, he can play anywhere in the back row."