Lights go out at Leamington as match is abandoned
Leamington FC’s second attempt to host Buxton in the National League North on Tuesday night was cut short by a power failure.
Brakes were 1-0 down with just over an hour played when four floodlights went out, with the club citing a ‘Western Power issue’ as the cause of the problem.
And despite a wait of nearly an hour to see if the situation could be resolved, the game was eventually abandoned just before 10pm and the match will now need to be replayed, having already been rescheduled once due to a frozen pitch on the game’s original date.
On Saturday, Leamington had been beaten 3-0 at league leaders South Shields as they remain bottom of the league.
Goals early in each half and then a third on the hour sent the Brakes to defeat and, following the midweek games, they are now ten points adrift of safety.
Interim manager Chris Knott told the club’s media the timing of the goals was key.
He said: “To be fair the first one took a little deflection off Archie. They just got inside us, which we talked about before the game. It is what it is, we get overrun on the outside and it’s an unfortunate one, but to be fair they reacted quite well after that.
"We had a good spell where we just settled. We knew they would have 90 percent of the ball but that’s how they play. We were quite content with that, but we just didn’t get away from them. Whenever we nicked the ball we just never got a forward pass in, we never got away from people, which was disappointing.
“Then at the start of the second half it was just a cross-cum-shot which just came out of nowhere which again just deflates you. I think then we looked a bit deflated and rattled in the next 15 minutes and they scored again, but then we had probably 20 minutes there where we were on an even par, nicking a couple of balls, but we just didn’t get away and create any half chances.”
This weekend, Leamington host Curzon Ashton before then welcoming King’s Lynn on Tuesday.