Torpoint Athletic's plans were somewhat curtailed last Friday evening by the decision of the match referee to deem the pitch at the The Mill unplayable in what what would have been the club's first encounter under their new floodlights.
The decision appeared questionable at the time... but Torpoint's Director of Football, Ricky Cardew, threw a different light on the subject.
'At 8.00pm, after everyone had gone, manager Ian Stephens and myself decided to go out and inspect the pitch and it was rock-hard. The cold had descended on the pitch and it would have been dangerous – I made a point of phoning the referee the next morning and telling him that he got the decision spot on,' he revealed.
The game – against cross-Tamar rivals Plymouth Parkway – was called off at just after 6.00 pm, and the rights and wrongs of the decision can continue; in my opinion the pitch was playable, but the decision rests with the man in the middle.
In this era of litigation it is perhaps understandable that more caution is exercised; but if that trend continues, will we be seeing matches put off in July and August because of bone-hard pitches?
The considerable numbers already gathered at The Mill had to be content with a 'switching-on' ceremony conducted by three Torpoint stalwarts.
Club president Neil Bartley, who had travelled a long distance to be present, head groundsman Mike Vigus and all-time leading goalscorer John Bolton each threw a switch as the ground was illuminated to a hefty round of applause from those present.
Torpoint club chairman Paul Whitworth, who was one of several who had been working at the ground all that day, admitted: 'We are obviously very disappointed as we were expecting a big crowd, along with various officials from the League and The FA, so the decision on the pitch has put a bit of a dampener on the occasion.
'But the aim was achieved and we have switched the lights on and they looked very good. I genuinely believe we have one of the best sets of lights in the League, and we can now look forward to playing matches under them.
'There has been a lot of hard work by a lot of people to achieve our aim – and it is now almost 18 months since we first made the decision to get the lights to the switching-on ceremony.
'It has been very frustrating at times, but we have got there in the end and this club can now move forward as we have other ground improvements in the pipeline which will make The Mill one of the better grounds to visit and play football.'
The final word went to Whitworth, who said: 'We will not let the lack of the match spoil the occasion, as we have a lot of invited guests here and this gave us the chance to say thank you to everyone who had contributed with the efforts to get the lights raised.'