3/1 To Win
A football match abandoned after 19 minutes in August for torrential weather conditions.
Now, that’s not something you hear about very often, but that was case with Derby County’s Carabao Cup First Round meeting at Grimsby Town, which was abandoned by Trevor Kettle, the referee, as non-stop heavy rain quickly began to affect the playing conditions at Blundell Park.
Richard Keogh, the Rams’ captain, was left stunned by how quickly the weather deteriorated in Cleethorpes and labelled the washout as ‘crazy’.
The 30-year-old told RamsTV: “It’s crazy. We travelled up and it seemed ok. It was quite murky, but we thought the game would be fine.
“Even during the warm-up, the pitch seemed to be holding up well, but once the game kicked off it just seemed to get worse and worse.
“After about five minutes the puddles started to form a bit more, everyone was slipping over, the ball was getting stuck and we couldn’t really pass it properly.
“Once you looked at the pitch when we came off, it was clear that we wouldn’t have been able to continue so in the end it was the right decision to call it off.”
The game was abandoned with Derby leading 1-0 after Keogh’s fifth minute header had opened the scoring.
The Republic of Ireland international was naturally frustrated that it means the club’s fixture list will become more clustered in the coming weeks.
And whilst his goal will be wiped out of the history books too, Keogh is not giving it up!
He added: “It’s frustrating because it’s just another game that has been put back in our schedule.
“Ideally, we wouldn’t want that, but we have got a big enough squad to cope with it.
“I seem to like playing and scoring against Grimsby as well.
“It was a good ball by Butts (Jacob Butterfield), a nice header and whilst people are telling me that it doesn’t count, it still does to me! That’s me off the mark for the season!”
Derby’s captain also reserved a word for the ‘amazing’ 1,000+ Derby supporters that made the trip to Blundell Park.
Keogh said: “The fans were amazing and stayed with us right until the very end.
“I hope the club can put something on for them for when we return here. They have earned that, they deserve it.”
Details of a re-arranged date for the match – and ticket information – will be confirmed in due course on dcfc.co.uk.
