Fears for players' safety led to the referee abandoning Saturday night's Martonmere Cup clash between Devonshire Cougars and Dandy Town.

There were just 14 minutes of the match left at BAA Field when George O'Brien called a halt to proceedings because of adverse weather conditions.

Dandy Town had been leading 1-0 when the heavens opened and thunder and lightning erupted around the ground.

Ironically the conditions led, in part, to Cougars equalising just moments before O'Brien made his decision.

Although players from both teams did not immediately seem to agree with the referee, it appeared the right decision to take.

There have been incidents of footballers being struck by lightning while out on the field of play and officials believed it was not worth risking such a tragedy here.

Also, the deluge meant parts of the field quickly became swamped in water and there was a chance that even if the game was allowed to continue areas of the field would have become unplayable before the 14 minutes were up.

O'Brien said his original decision was just to call a temporary halt to the tie, in the hope that the rains would cease. However, it continued for some considerable time afterwards leaving organisers with no alternative but to call it a day.

For the record, Dandy Town went ahead against the run of play just four minutes before the break.

Man of the match - if it's possible to have one with 76 minutes completed - Lionel Furbert squared the ball to Janeiro Tucker just outside the box and he showed that his excellent shot placement in cricket is equally transferable to soccer by firing a curling strike into the top left hand corner.

It seemed that that would be the only goal of the game until just minutes before the action was abruptly ended.

O'Brien either failed to see a push on Furbert close to his own area or deemed it not a foul, and Kori Goddard took full advantage by unleashing a skidding shot that beat Jason Smith to his left.

The match, along with North Village against PHC, which had been scheduled to follow the first game, will now be played tomorrow evening at the same venue. Kick-off times will be 7.00 p.m. and 9.00 p.m.