Town's game away to Morecambe was called off this afternoon at 2:15pm this afternoon. Town arrived at Christie Park at 1:30pm to be told that there was a concern with the pitch and that there had been an earlier pitch inspection and another would be held later.

Ref Mike Jones spoke to both managers and after much deliberation the ref finally decided to call the game off. He had concern about a 15% part of the pitch behind the goal in front of the Umbro stand. Parts of the pitch had been covered overnight but the one strip hadn't and this was the one causing concern.

Town manager Gary Peters spoke to the press after the postponement to give them his thoughts: "I don't agree with the game being called off but the area that the ref is concerned with is unplayable.

"They've got covers behind the goal there that don't seem to have been put on that area and if they could have put them on it could have been on, and that is the area where the sun doesn't get to the pitch.

"We didn't know about any concern until we got here at half one, even Sammy McIlroy didn't know there was a pitch inspection until I got here.

"I can understand his decision, he's thinking of the player's safety and needed a definite ok from both parties and he made his decision when he fell over.

"We spoke about delaying the kick-off to give it more chance but the grounds man said that the sun won't get too that area.

"The fans and us have travelled up here and to have a game called off so late is disappointing."

In an unprecedented move, Town manager Gary Peters made a second trip up to the press box to try and clear up some confusion about today's late call-off.

Some away fans, obviously angry at having made a fruitless trip to Lancashire, had confronted the gaffer who was making his way back to his car to start the journey home.

"There was a suggestion made as I was leaving the ground that we wanted the game called off which is absolute nonsense," he said. "We got here at 1:30 pm and a lot of our fans had made the journey up as well so to suggest we didn't want to play is ludicrous.

"90% of the pitch was playable but there's an area down by the 18 yard box which is hard and therefore unplayable. Myself and Sammy had no call on it. He (the referee) made his mind up when he went to train on it and fell over.

"If he was going to allow the game to go ahead he would have needed both managers to agree to it but he went out and took that decision away from us. He said it wasn't fit and tried to give it another 15 minutes but he fell over and made his decision then. It's disappointing 'cos it's such a small area we're talking about - the referee said 15 per-cent. If it had been covered last night I'm sure the game would have gone ahead," said the frustrated Shrews boss.

Peters was clearly frustrated at having to come up a second time to speak to those members of the press still lingering as an impromptu training session was held on the unaffected area of the Christie Park pitch.

"It's the usual football thing isn't it - rumours? Someone's walked out of the ground and said to some of our fans 'Oh, your gaffer wanted the game off', which is rubbish. Managers don't make decisions like this. We've come all this way and we wanted to get the game played. I think 'cos we've got a few injuries with Colin Murdock and Ben Davies not fit they think we wanted it off, but until we got here at half-past one we didn't even know there was a problem with the pitch and only found out when we walked into the stadium.

The manager then talked about his likely starting XI with Steve Leslie set for a rare first team outing on the left and Chris Humphrey rewarded for his excellent performance as a substitute in the second half of Tuesday's pulsating 3-3 draw with Milton Keynes.

"They were right we did have a young side out with Leslie & Humphrey the wingers and we were particularly looking forward to seeing the pairing of Guy Madjo & James Constable up front. But the rest of the side was as you'd expect with only Kempson in for Colin Murdock at the back with Asa & Kevin in the middle. So we felt we had a really strong side out there and I was really looking forward to seeing if Chris and Steve could stretch them.

"We were really looking forward to it and wanted the game on but I can understand why the ref made the decisions and it was the right one as 10-15% of the pitch was frozen."