Colchester United chairman Robbie Cowling on pitch

The U’s game against Doncaster Rovers scheduled for tonight was postponed this morning, after heavy rain in North Essex left the JobServe Community Stadium pitch waterlogged.

It was the third Colchester home game in the space of four weeks to fall foul of the weather, following the U’s recent fixtures against Stockport County and Grimsby Town also being called off.

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Mr Cowling has released a statement following today’s latest postponement and U’s chairman and owner says work will take place to improve the drainage at the stadium, this summer.

He told the club’s website: “The club will continue to work tirelessly for the remainder of the season to ensure we get the games played.

“At the end of this season, we already have plans to undertake major works to improve the drainage.

“The rainfall this winter may have exceeded historic records, but I fear they are the new normal levels, and we will need to cope better with such levels of rainfall in the future.”

While Colchester’s game against Doncaster was postponed early in the day, giving plenty of notice to supporters, their recent fixtures against Stockport and Grimsby were called off closer to kick-off time.

Mr Cowling, who confirmed the club has a team of four groundstaff and are currently advertising for a fifth member, says the U's are working with the EFL to ensure they are aware of the measures they are taking to resolve the pitch issues.

Mr Cowling added: “I would like to apologise for those games where we provided very late notice of the postponement.

“Our focus was solely on getting those games played and we have now implemented a better process whereby we still do our best to fix the problem, but we do better to manage it too.

“I’m no drainage expert but the pitch at our stadium has never been great in terms of the drainage.

“I’m sure many of you will remember the problems we had in the initial few seasons when we first moved to the stadium and that was when the pitch had been freshly laid and the drainage system was brand new.

“The pitch I own at Maldon gets nowhere near the same amount of TLC but drains brilliantly. Layer Road was similar.

“The pitch at the stadium sits on a bed of clay and our recent investigations show that the clay bed is just some 10 inches below the surface.

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“That shouldn’t be an issue if the pitch has a well designed and installed drainage system which is working optimally, whilst only being subjected to reasonable amounts of rainfall.”

Colchester have now turned their thoughts to this weekend’s home clash with Walsall.

More rain is forecast in North Essex between now and then but Mr Cowling says everything will be put in place for the game to go ahead and the club will work 'tirelessly' to ensure it does.

Mr Cowling added: “In the very short-term, we remain at the mercy of the weather.

“A lot of work went into making the pitch playable for tonight’s game, but the timing and extent of today’s rainfall showed us no such mercy.

“Thanks to considerable effort from the staff again this morning, we were able to get the pitch covered again and the current weather forecast indicates that we will be able to remove the covers tomorrow morning.

“It is supposed to remain dry for a couple of days which will provide us with some time to work on the pitch before covering it and uncovering it again before Saturday’s scheduled game against Walsall.”