The IFA Premiership Management Committee meton Thursday night to discuss rescheduling the fixtures which could not take place last Saturday due to the referees' strike action.

The Setanta Sports Cup semi finals are also scheduled for that week and in the event of any of the IFA Premiership teams being involved their fixture will be postponed and rescheduled for a later date.

It had been thought those games would still be played on a Saturday - Tueday will hit Lisburn Distillery in the pocket. They had been all geared up for a bumper start to the new season with the visit of the Blues, now they will certainly not cash in with a midweek fixture.


IFA Premiership Management Committee Chairman Jack Grundie explained: "We considered all the possible options at our meeting last evening and ideally we would have preferred to reschedule the fixtures on a Saturday. There was serious consideration afforded to playing the matches on Saturday 28 March (which has been kept as a free date due to the FIFA World Cup Qualifier at Windsor Park between Northern Ireland and Poland) which would have represented the final match day before the split into two sections. However, in order to protect the sporting integrity of the competition it was agreed that all matches on match day 33 should be played on the same day and with the strong possibility of International call ups resulting in postponements it was decided that this would not be in the best interests of football.

"The matches will now be played on Tuesday 7 October and in the event of any of our clubs being involved in the Setanta Sports Cup semi finals those matches will be rearranged in accordance with league rules."