Thistle to repair pitch at the end of the season

Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald has revealed the Firhill pitch is in line for major repair works this summer - but they never considered an artificial surface despite their fixture backlog.

Firhill was subjected to its fourth postponement of the season on Friday when the waterlogged pitch put paid to the visit of Aberdeen.

Tuesday night's Premiership encounter against St Johnstone is in little danger, though, with the pitch dried out and no rain forecast.

"Because we have a couple of areas that are really damaged, all it takes is four hours of constant rain and it puts it in doubt,'' Archibald said.

"The forecast is dry so there shouldn't be any problem for Tuesday.

"We will look to re-lay it or definitely get drainage in and fix those areas. We have already had people in to look at it.

"We have not had any problems since the (Glasgow) Warriors were here sharing the pitch. It's been a one-off but we'll have to get it addressed. The problem will be in the summer when it's such a short shutdown with the League Cup starting earlier.''

There are some barren patches which are affecting play but Thistle are confident the situation will improve and one unusually wet winter has not led to discussions over artificial turf.

"We spoke about it three seasons ago, the season we came up,'' Archibald said.

"At that point there were two (league) federations controlling it and they said if we went with astro we wouldn't come up.

"Obviously that has changed now but it's not something we have looked at since.

"We have never had a problem, we have only had one game off and the pitch has always been fine, it has never stopped us playing good football.

"Obviously this year it's been highlighted with astro pitches and the media furore about it, and our games being called off hasn't helped, but I'd rather spend money getting the grass pitch as best we can.''

Thistle beat Motherwell 1-0 in the most recent Firhill encounter, on February 2, and defender Dan Seaborne felt the pitch made the game a struggle.

"It was horrific that game actually,'' Seaborne said. It's there for everyone to see. We might have made the best of a bad scenario and probably played some okay football at times.

"That's credit to the lads and the manager for the way he wants us to play but it's by no means good. But it's the same for both teams so we both have to go out there and put our football across and try to get a result.''

The latest postponement followed Thistle's fruitless journey to Edinburgh the previous weekend, when their game against Hearts was called off on Saturday afternoon.

Archibald said: "You can take it when it's just the one week and the boys can get their heads back down and prepare for the next game, but that was a hard one to take.

"We had to find somewhere to train over the weekend and the lads look like they need a game now. They have that pre-season look about them when they are fed up of training.''