'A dreadful call to make': Portsmouth chief explains why Millwall clash had to be abandoned

Tonight’s Championship clash at Fratton Park was called off at 8.40pm, despite having restored floodlights and the majority of stand lighting.

The stadium had been plunged into darkness just 10 minutes before the scheduled 7.45pm kick-off time after a ‘blow out’ at the adjacent substation monitored by Southern Electric.

While lights in the North Stand Upper were unaffected, other parts of the stadium had been forced to switch to emergency lighting, with kiosks without electricity.

However, while the floodlights were later restored, allowing players to return to the pitch and warm-up ahead of the anticipated match, the fixture was eventually abandoned without a ball being kicked.

And Pompey’s chief executive afterwards explained their reasoning.

Cullen told The News: ‘It’s frustrating, it’s disappointing, I’m really upset we haven’t got the game on. There was a deluge of rain last night and the groundsmen have worked tirelessly on this pitch to get it ready.

‘It was a dreadful call to make for everybody, I won’t hide from that. We come here to put games of football on and we haven’t been able to do that tonight - and that’s upsetting.

‘Just after 7.45pm we lost power within the stadium, we lost the floodlights, we lost a lot of lighting in the stands, we lost everything in terms of CCTV so we had a major power failure within Fratton Park.

‘We got to a stage by 8pm where we were able to restore the floodlights, some of the lights had started to come back in the stands, but we still didn’t have the full capacity that we felt we would need to run a football match in front of a capacity crowd at Fratton Park in a safe manner.

‘As we were getting closer to 8.30pm, it was getting quite tense because, at that stage, we were uncertain how much time we had.

‘In addition, there was the issue of people getting back on trains. The game would not have been finished until well after 10.30pm, after which the last trains would have left to go back to London. That would have left a lot of people stranded, so that was an extra consideration which came into play.

‘Who knows, we might have got the game on by 8.50-9pm but that would have been too late for everybody to be safe.

‘The most important thing about coming to a football game is crowd safety, it’s number one. We come to watch our teams win football matches, we come to watch entertaining games, but the most important thing is everybody who comes to a football match should have the confidence that they can watch the match in safety and they get home in safety.

‘Once you have any doubts about that, you have to make the right decisions.’

The Millwall disappointment represents a second successive match postponement for Pompey, following on from Saturday’s fixture at Blackburn which fell victim to the weather.

And Cullen believes it is ‘too early’ to establish the full reasons behind the electricity issues.

He added: ‘The power comes from a substation behind the North Stand and that is completely fenced off and sealed off.

‘Having spoken to Southern Electric, that’s where we understand the problem took place. We now need to understand why that trip took place, whether it was anything to do with the football club or elsewhere. It’s too early to speculate what that might be.

‘We have no access to it at all. We do have another substation panel outside, but that wasn’t the problem. If it had been, we could have done something about it in a far more effective and speedy manner.’