Yorkshire Division One secretary Alden Phillips believes it was the right decision to call off Keighley’s home match against Castleford last Saturday.

The in-form Utley side were hoping to make it eight wins from nine games but the game was postponed about an hour before kick-off due to a frozen pitch, with their opponents having made the trip to Rose Cottage.

Phillips, who is also Keighley’s football sub-committee secretary, said: “We wanted to play but about 50 per cent of the pitch was probably playable at 2.15pm (kick-off time) and about 50 per cent of it was probably not playable.

“We had to take the gamble of asking Castleford to travel as, with the forecasted thaw later in the day and a backlog of fixtures that has already reached 30 matches in our division, it would have been an even bigger disappointment if Castleford hadn’t travelled and the pitch had been fit.”

Phillips added: “I rang Castleford at between 10.30am and 11am on Saturday to say that the pitch was not playable at that stage but that we wanted them to come because it was forecast to get warmer.

“I spoke to the Castleford secretary and he said ‘That happened to us at York and we didn’t play, so is the match on or off?’ “I told him the match was on but that if it did get called off then we would split the cost of any reasonable travelling expenses that Castleford incurred.

“But the problem was that the thaw wasn’t as strong as was forecast.

“The problem area was the right-hand side of the pitch as you look from the clubhouse where it had cut up when the second team had played on it the previous Saturday.

“Ironically, when I returned to my car at 5.30pm the temperature was showing as seven degrees, so if we had hung around and had floodlights, we would have been able to play it at tea-time.”

Despite the large backlog of matches, Phillips said no games in his division have yet been scheduled for May.

He said: “Using Saturdays, we now have fixtures every weekend until April 30, when there is currently only one match scheduled. If more games are called off, as long as it does not involve those two clubs, we can schedule them for April 30.

“The problem is that we still have some of January and all of February to go but the forecast for this weekend isn’t too bad.

“I haven’t yet had to consider the possibility of playing matches out of order so as to put the longest trips on Saturdays, leaving any more local contests as a possibility for midweeks.”

Keighley visit 11th-placed Bridlington on Saturday, hoping for a repeat of their convincing victory in the corresponding fixture when they were 55-22 winners.

Scrum half Adam Balderstone is unavailable so winger Lucas Uren steps in. Back-rowers Scott Dyson and Dave Pullen are also missing through work but Tom Lowther is fit again.

Morgan Phillips and Sean Millican make the bench.

Meanwhile, despite the large backlog of matches, Phillips said no games in his division have yet been scheduled for May.

He said: “Using Saturdays, we now have fixtures every weekend until April 30, when there is currently only one match scheduled. If more games are called off, as long as it does not involve those two clubs, we can schedule them for April 30.

“The problem is that we still have some of January and all of February to go but the forecast for this weekend isn’t too bad.

“I haven’t yet had to consider the possibility of playing matches out of order so as to put the longest trips on Saturdays, leaving any more local contests as a possibility for midweeks.”

Keighley (at Bridlington): D McGee, R Wilkinson, A Horsfall, M Ferrazzano, J Anson; A Brown, L Uren; C Spencer, W Armitage, O Sugden, D Lister, S Inman, T Lowther, N Thornton, L Sugden. Replacements: P Sinfield, M Phillips, S Minikin.