​Bath City captain Jim Rollo has defended referee Antony Coggins over his decision to call off the New Year’s Day derby with Weston-super-Mare at Twerton Park.

The home contingent were angered after the Bicester official changed his mind about the state of the playing surface, passing it fit at 1pm and then declaring it frozen around 40 minutes later after the Weston coaching staff voiced their concern.

Many fans were already in the vicinity of the ground at the time, while a number of volunteers had worked hard to keep the frost out of the ground ahead of the game.

With the game off, City’s players were put through their paces during an hour-long training session instead and Rollo conceded: “I think it was the correct decision from the referee in the end, after we gave him quite a lot of stick for calling it off.

“We get paid to play football and that’s what we turned up to do today.

“We were walking round the pitch thinking ‘this is not too bad’ and were giving them (Weston) a bit of stick because they were saying ‘no, it’s not too good’.

“The referee’s made the decision and, after training on it, you can see why he’s called it off. When you put your boots on it is a bit different.”

City are next in action at Hampton & Richmond next Saturday and take on a home side struggling for form after being beaten in the play-off final in each of the last two seasons.

Rollo said: “We had an enjoyable training session and hopefully we can take that into Tuesday and Thursday and then the game at Hampton, because they’ve been a bit of a bogey side for us over the past couple of years.”

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