| Pool fury over league cup final date |
| Monday 08 February 2010 |
 WELSHPOOL have reacted strongly to the news that the League Cup final is to be played on Easter Sunday. The mid-Wales outfit were due to host The New Saints in a local derby on Easter Monday, re-arranged from the original Boxing Day date. "While we understand that Easter Sunday is the best date for the League Cup final, we are deeply disappointed with the position it has put our club in," says secretary Liam Pritchard. "This fixture had attracted the promise of a significant amount of much needed money for Technogroup Welshpool and rearranging to a Tuesday night will have a detrimental effect on the attendance that makes sponsoring the match a less attractive proposition so we will now be missing out. "We feel that this situation was entirely avoidable as there is really no justification for leaving it this late in the season to announce a date for the final. "Every other fixture in the league and cup calendar was set back in August, why not this one? What other country in the world would not have set the date at the beginning of the season? "The semi finals were completed in late October/early November. Both finalists were known weeks before we proposed the date for the match with The New Saints, why did the league agree to it? Surely they would have had some inkling when they hoped to play the final. "This is the second year in a row bizarre decisions from the Welsh Premier League have left us counting the cost, following the decision to switch our fixture with Rhyl to suit S4C last season. "The league restructure is supposed to give Welsh Football a more professional image, but incidents such as this only serve to undermine that", Pritchard added. Two other games will have to be re-arranged to accommodate the final, Rhyl v TNS and Carmarthen Town v Rhyl, both of which were scheduled for the holiday weekend. |