ELECTRICITY chiefs have confirmed it was their faulty equipment which blacked out Harrogate Town's home match against Stafford Rangers on Tuesday night.

When floodlights at the Wetherby Road ground of the Conference North side went on the blink, club officials sent out an SOS for their electrician, who arrived at the ground within five minutes.

But despite an exhaustive check of the lighting equipment, he decided the fault was outside the ground. The match had to be postponed.

A spokesman for the local electricity company NEDL said yesterday the failure of the floodlights and lighting around the ground was caused by a fault at its sub-station in the Wetherby Road area where a service fuse had failed. NEDL said within an hour of being told about the problem yesterday they had fixed it.

Football club company secretary Brian Russell said money already paid by spectators had been refunded. A new date for the match will be announced shortly.