Ashford’s 3G pitch failed its annual inspection - but the club have moved quickly to put things right.

The Nuts & Bolts were hit with a list of requirements after the artificial surface at Homelands was inspected on Friday.

Owner Don Crosbie said last night they were 90% there with the work, which has cost about £6,000, and assessors will return tomorrow, by which time repairs should be complete.

All being well, Ashford’s scheduled home game against East Grinstead on Saturday will go ahead as planned.

The Nuts & Bolts certainly hope so, having already had to postpone last week’s meeting with Sevenoaks while they awaited the initial inspection.

“They came down and gave us a list of about 14 jobs to do,” said Crosbie.

“The problem we’ve had is there’s such a shortage of test engineers - there’s only three in the whole country, which is ridiculous, and the firm that was doing it for the last five years weren’t accredited.

“They shouldn’t have been doing it but the FA have put them on the register for some reason.

“So we’ve got a build-up of probably five years’ work to do straight away.

“We’ve done 90% of it already. We’re trying to knock the rest of it off and hopefully that will be it if all goes well.

“It’s just things like levelling the pitch off and, evidently, the sprinklers have got to be covered these days, so it’s various things.

“I find it quite galling because our pitch was put down in 2015, these are new regulations, we shouldn’t be tasked with new regulations.

"It’s a bit like asking to put seatbelts in a 1933 Morris Oxford, it wouldn’t happen.

“But, at the end of the day, we don’t want to rub anyone up the wrong way, we’ll accommodate, we’ll do whatever we can.

“If they make life difficult for us we’ll argue but at the moment we’ll just do it and get on with it.

"It’s cost probably £6,000 to put it right. It is what it is. People think you don’t have to maintain the pitches but you do."

Crosbie is confident the pitch will be passed on Thursday.

If not, the East Grinstead match is likely to be postponed rather than moved to an alternative venue.

He added: “If they say no on Thursday and they give us a few more jobs, we’ll have to do them and they’ll have to come back next week. That’s all you can do.

“Don’t forget, when they first came down we had loads of jobs and now we’ve got very few, we’ll work through them until they’re happy.

“If we have to postpone Saturday, we’ll have to postpone, it’s only a couple of games and and then we’re back on it.

“I don’t accept it’s our fault, I’d like the FA to take responsibility but at the end of the day we have to work with it and what they give us and we have.

“We haven’t shouted and hollered and cried, we’ve just got on with the work and we’re nearly there.”