IT WAS meant to be a day of celebration and memorial, which ended up being filled with anger and frustration.

Members of the Winklebury Wizards football team, along with people from the wider community were set to host a memorial game for the team’s long standing coach Graham Garrett, only for it to be cancelled the day before.

The game was due to be played at the Hampshire FA’s Winklebury Sports Complex, in Winklebury Way on Saturday, only for the FA to pull the plug on the game Friday lunchtime because of the ‘predicted bad weather’.

This left friends and family frustrated with the FA’s decision as there was very little rain on Saturday and only one of seven Saturday League games played in Basingstoke were cancelled.

Winklebury Wizards temporary secretary Harry Grainger said the FA’s decision and reasoning to call off the game was “ridiculous”.

He said: “I think it is disgusting what the Hampshire FA have done, they rarely use that pitch so I would love to know what they actually do with it.

“It is kept and maintained by a groundsman, yet there are pitches around Basingstoke which aren’t and their games still went ahead over the weekend.

“I know some people were travelling down from Norfolk just to play in the game, we were expecting more than 200 people there so it is just so frustrating.”

The match was organised to honour the life of Mr Garrett, who died suddenly at the end of last year at the age of 63. Mr Garrett had been a coach at Winklebury Wizards for more than 20 years and had been an integral part of the community.

At his funeral in December more than 450 people attended – showing how well respected he was in the town.

Graham’s son Lee has taken over in his father’s footsteps as a football coach and had helped organise the memorial match.

“It was not great to have it called off the day before, as we had so many people coming down to take part,” said the 21 year-old.

“But it is their pitch so it’s just one of those things we need to get on with.

“There were players who had taken time off to come and play, referees who had to travel down and we had spent hundreds of pounds on putting a memorial programme together, we went all out for it.

“It’s just a shame we will have to rearrange everything now.”

A spokesman from Hampshire FA said there had been concerns raised about the condition of the pitch before Friday.

He said: “A pitch inspection was undertaken by a qualified referee on Friday due to concerns over the centre circle and both goalmouths, and the decision was taken to postpone the fixtures scheduled for the Saturday.

“There was also another fixture scheduled for Sunday, which was again postponed following a pitch inspection.”