WITH THE luxury of a floodlit pitch at their disposal, Supermarine aren’t letting the recent wet weather rain on their parade as they target promotion from Dorset & Wilts 1 North.

Marine’s weekend clash with Devizes 2nds, like most of the local rugby fixture list, was called off due to a waterlogged pitch at South Marston but head coach Sean Millwaters has already been able to rearrange the tie which will now be played under floodlights at the start of February.

With five teams separated by just five points at the top of the table, rescheduling matches which have fallen victim to the weather may just be Marine’s trump card in their fight to return to Southern Counties.

“We’re in quite a good position because we’ve got floodlights. Any games we lose at home we’ll be able to offer midweek fixtures. We’ve got in booked in for a couple of weeks.

“If we win the cup game then Devizes’ next cup final is on that same weekend.

“We can offer evening kick-offs because of the floodlights we’ve got so we never really run into difficulty, certainly with home games, or run into a backlog.

“Other clubs don’t have the facilities, I don’t know of any other club in the area that has floodlights.”

Only the midtable meeting of Fairford and Melksham, which ended in a comprehensive 38-5 win for the hosts, took place at the weekend, meaning none of the promotion contenders got a chance to create space between themselves and the chasing pack.

“There was only one game, which was Fairford and Melksham. It’s frustrating not having a game but bearing in mind no one had a game there’s no pressure on anyone,” said Millwaters.

“We had a good training session Thursday night, Saturday would have been good but we have got an all-weather area at the club and I need to check with the powers-that-be that it’s usable.

“If the rain stops towards the end of the week we should be able to get a game in on Saturday but if it keeps on raining we’ll be struggling.”

Swindon’s clash with Marlow in South West 1 East and Wootton Bassett’s Southern Counties North game against Reading Abbey both fell victim to the weather while Swindon College Old Boys conceded a walkover to Stow on the Wold.