Ashford have been forced to postpone tonight’s home game against Sevenoaks just hours before kick-off.

The club haven’t been able to get their 3G pitch certified in time, leaving them no choice but to call off the Isthmian South East fixture.

All artificial pitches have to pass an annual grading, in Homelands’ case, a FIFA one-star rating.

Nuts & Bolts owner Don Crosbie has cited a shortage of accredited certifiers and can only see the problems getting worse as 3G pitches become more popular.

“The pitch has to be certificated every year and so we tried to get it done last week but it’s going to take until Friday before the certificate can be issued,” said Crosbie.

“Unfortunately, the new rules with the Football Foundation (who maintain the register for 3G pitches) are to have this certification in place so therefore we’ve had to postpone tonight’s game.

“The people that used to have the contract to certificate our pitch every year have packed up and so we’ve had to find someone else to come in and do it and it’s just the timing.

“It couldn’t be done quick enough, so there you go.

“Everyone’s blaming the backlog on Covid.

“A lot of firms went out of business, a lot shut down and are doing other things and I’m just so angry, all these 3G pitches that are going in, there isn’t the people to build them and maintain them and people to certificate them.

“Our pitch went in seven years ago. Obviously we’ve got two new pitches going in next year (main pitch and new side pitch at Homelands).

"It should have been this year but because of Covid and there being no pitch builders available until next April, our new pitch will go in then, which is OK but it means it’s delayed a year.

“But with the number of pitches being built around the county and the country, there isn’t enough builders, and of course they’ve got to be accredited, so I don’t know what’s going to happen.

“The league were really good, they could see there’s going to be lots of problems to come with pitch certification.

“All these pitches are done at the same time, they don’t stagger them throughout the year.

“I only know two accredited pitch certifiers and that’s Labosport or Surface Performance. I don’t know any others.

“There used to be three or four from the London area but they’ve all packed up and are doing other things.

“Because of Covid, they had nothing to do, they all collapsed.

“I made the point this morning, I said it’s going to get worse because there’s so many pitches being built - where’s all the accredited firms coming from?

“You need the pitch builders but every year the pitches have all got to be certified. How’s it going to get done? Who knows?”

Ashford's next home game is set to be the league fixture against East Grinstead on August 27.