Cropredy Football Club place on record their side of events following what we see as a character assassination from Adderbury Park posted on X this afternoon.

We informed that our pitch at Williamscot Road would be inspected this morning following heavy rain this week and a postponement of last week’s fixture against Thame United Reserves. The referee agreed the pitch was unplayable. We contacted Adderbury Park FC and asked if their back up venue at Middle Barton was available as we would be willing to play there. The referee let the appropriate people know the game was off and we contacted our players to tell them the news. As players at our level do, many had made alternative plans or had other work and family commitments.

Half an hour later Adderbury Park contacted us to inform us of how they had arranged to switch their Development team’s match to Bletchingdon. By which time Cropredy did not have enough available players to play in the match.

Cropredy’s dismisall of playing is in line with the rules stated in the Oxfordshire Senior League handbook which states that whilst any attempt to switch venues should be encouraged this needs to happen at the time of agreement of the postponement and not at a later time such as was done.

We admire Adderbury’s relentless attempt to get the game on but Cropredy FC have the right to call this game off according to the rules and accept no wrongdoing. We have our own agenda in the league in terms of fighting relegation and playing a game with less than eleven players once the venue was re-arranged had no appeal to us. We see this as Adderbury Park looking to ease their fixture congestion for their own convenience of which we have no vested interest. We will be working with the league to come to the correct outcome and look forward to hosting Adderbury later in the season.