Phoenix have been left frustrated as their game was cancelled for the second week in a row after poor weather conditions last Sunday afternoon made it impossible for the match to go ahead against Greenwich University.
This follows the home game to City Wolfpack which was postponed the previous week due to the pitch at the East London Rugby club being unplayable.
Harder
It comes at a bad time for UEL as the lack of action makes preparations harder for the play-off games in the coming months.
UEL claim the game against City Wolfpack could have gone ahead.
The match that was scheduled to kick-off at 13:00pm was cancelled at the last minute after a representative from pitch hosts East London Rugby Club messaged both team captains to say that the field was too wet to play on.
UEL captain, Tatum Etchegoyen-Springer, was later informed that the game could go ahead.
She said: “the East London Rugby club’s representative [who] evaluated the pitch texted both myself and City Wolfpack’s captain saying that the pitch was too wet to play on.
‘Willing’
“I then said to the representatives that the field seems to be fine, or at least not worse than usual and that our team is willing to play.”
After Etchegoyen-Springer said that her team was still willing to play, the Rugby club’s representative reportedly gave them the all clear, but Phoenix City Wolfpack decided to have to game postponed.
Etchegoyen-Springer said: “The representative from East London Rugby club said that we can play if we want to, effectively saying that the pitch was good enough to play on.
“Regardless of this, City Wolfpack postponed the game as they could prove that the pitch was declared unplayable and ignoring the fact that the representatives from the Rugby club gave the green light minutes later”, she said.
Confident
Rising East made repeated attempts to contact a representative from City Wolfpack but they were unavailable for comment.
Having only won one of their last four games, UEL were feeling confident going into the game with the team in good shape and in good spirit.
Defensive Line-back, Csecs Laslo Norbert, shared his frustrations on the claims that City Wolfpack postponed the game.
‘Wrong’
He said: “I think our team is in great shape and spirit, that is why City Wolfpack wanted to postpone the game and used the miscommunication to get themselves some more time to prepare.
“They could have played if they wanted to. I am not saying that they are wrong in doing so, just that doing so is not particularly Wolf-like”, said Laslo Norbert.
The rescheduled date for the game against City Wolfpack is 23rd February.
