Livingston cup clash snowed off again

Jan 14 2010 by Eric MacKinnon, West Lothian Courier

LIVINGSTON invested cash, heavy plant machinery, old-fashioned hard graft and a host of bodies but it still wasn’t enough to beat the big freeze for their Scottish Cup clash with Dundee.

The tie was frozen off on Saturday and then again on Tuesday, leaving Livi with another week of inactivity.

The West Lothian club’s staff did all they could to get Almondvale’s iced-over surface playable, with Chairman Gordon McDougall leading the way behind the wheel of a dump truck.

Chief Executive Ged Nixon and a host of youth team players and supporters grabbed shovels to clear snow from the pitch, but it proved to no avail, due to a two-inch layer of ice, while the surrounding roads to the stadium and the stands remained treacherous.

The Lions and the Dark Blues are now scheduled to meet, weather permitting, on Tuesday, January 19, to decide who earns a fourth round home tie against Ayr United or Brechin.

The efforts of the volunteers were not entirely in vain, however, as Livi’s first team were left with somewhere to train once the field-turf at the back of the stadium had been cleared. When the announcement came through that the game had been called off, the volunteers shifted their efforts – much to the benefit of the club.

Mr Nixon said: “We put a lot of time and effort into it but as soon as we knew the game wasn’t going to go ahead we shifted our attention to the field turf here, so the players would have some training facilities available to them.

“We are no different to any other club in that we’ve been chasing proper facilities in the bad weather but we’ve now got the park clear.

“In addition to the snow we had burst pipes all over the place in the stadium after we were caught with the thaw.

“The police called off our scheduled match on Tuesday as they felt the roads and pathways around the ground weren’t safe.

“It has improved vastly from the week before but it was still miles away from being acceptable.

“When we start playing matches again they are going to come thick and fast and we are all in need of a football overdose after such a long break.”