Rangers v Dundee: SPFL had two alternative Premiership venues on offer to stage game
The SPFL were presented with two alternative top flight venues to stage Dundee vs Rangers, according to Edinburgh News.
The outlet reported via their website on 10 April that the league had other options within the Scottish Premiership to fulfil the increasingly controversial fixture if Dens Park was waterlogged, but they weren’t taken.
Don Robertson postponed the Gers game for the second time after a 3.30pm inspection, after which he revealed pitch covers had failed amid heavy rain during the afternoon.
And according to the report Hibs have since complained to the league about potential competitive advantage issues arising from the game being rescheduled to a week later on 17 April.
It is unclear why the alternative grounds weren’t utilised when bad weather was forecast for Dundee, and duly arrived to leave the pitch waterlogged.
Rangers v Dundee could have been played elsewhere
If the venues on offer belonged to Premiership clubs it cannot have been Dundee United’s Tannadice a matter of minutes away from Dens Park, the usability of which continues to expose the top flight ground up the road.
But the league surely needs to provide some answers as to why they didn’t take up any of the offers and instead were content to let Don Robertson splash about on the playing surface forecast to be subject to heavy rain and then find out the game once again wouldn’t go ahead.
Ticketing or travel concerns for fans may have been complicated but that remains the case for many of them when the game is called off following a 3.30pm pitch inspection anyway.
Having now scheduled the fixture for a third time this season the league office has to have a better contingency plan in place for the same situation next week, rather than just hoping for the best as apparently happened this time.
Questions have clearly already been asked of Neil Doncaster from Easter Road and from Ibrox, which is no surprise, not least when he needs to justify his “highly unusual” arrangement as league chief executive.
It is one thing when an unforeseeable situation arises, but when Dens Park has repeatedly proven an issue in this exact way, including days ago for the weekend clash with Motherwell, three weeks ago for the original date of the Rangers visit (17 March), and when the weather was forecast to be bad, there seems little excuse for it simply to get rained off again and everyone get sent home.
In other Rangers news, “everybody thinks” the Light Blues are going to complete a major summer singing according to a journalist.
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