England’s clash with Poland rained off

England’s World Cup qualifier against Poland was last night postponed at the last minute due to a waterlogged pitch in Warsaw. The match will now go ahead at 3pm today instead.

Heavy rain fell throughout the day in the Polish capital and massive pools of water had appeared on the pitch.

Italian referee Gianluca Rocci inspected the pitch at 9pm local time, when the match was due to start at Warsaw’s National Stadium.

It seemed then that the cause was hopeless.

However, such was FIFA’s desperation for the match to go ahead, it was decided to wait another 45 minutes before making a final decision.

In the end, though, with rain continuing to fall, there was no chance of the game being played and the decision to postpone was taken.

The decision was greeted with derision by a packed stadium.

However, it seemed obvious from the initial inspection, as the ball repeatedly came to a standstill in huge puddles, there was no way the match could go ahead. Although the goalkeepers had begun their warm-up, neither team attempted it.

England coach Roy Hodgson claimed the pitch would take plenty of work to be playable by this afternoon.

“I’m rather hoping there’ll get it (the roof) closed now as quickly as possible and start to do some work on the pitch because at moment the pitch is in very poor condition,” he said.

“Water is lying on the surface. It’s going to need a lot of attention if it’s going to be playable.”

The England boss said he was happy with the rescheduled time, however.

“I think it was the only decision that could be made,” he said. “There’re no other possibilities. You can’t find dates at international level. The dates that are available are all taken up so you can’t just suddenly decide we’ll play it another time.

“What you have to do is to try to organise to get the game played as quickly as possible. We’ll have to go back to the hotel. We’re disappointed. We prepared well for this start tonight as no doubt the Poles have too, but now we’ve got to do it all over again and hopefully we’ll be as prepared as we were yesterday.”

Club England managing director Adrian Bevington confirmed the final decision to call off the game had been made by a FIFA match delegate.

He also said the Polish FA had raised the possibility of the game being rearranged for November.

However, as is their right, England declined, having already committed themselves to a high-profile friendly against Sweden in Gothenburg.

Meanwhile, in the other games in the group, Moldova saw off minnows San Marino 2-0 while Montenegro had a surprise 1-0 win over Ukraine.