THE low point probably came when the crowd in Warsaw's Stadion Narodowy was treated to a rendition of U2's "Beautiful Day" just as the national teams of Poland and England should have been kicking off. Suffice to say, there was nothing beautiful about this.

A stadium, constructed at considerable expense to stage five matches at last summer's European Championships, unable to cope with about six hours of rain.

Unthinkable? Well it should be. And here's the really staggering thing. It's a stadium with a roof. That's right - a roof. That wonderful invention that keeps the rain out.

Yet for some unfathomable reason, the decision was taken to keep the roof open. The Polish authorities claim the English FA were consulted in a meeting on Monday afternoon; Adrian Bevington, communications director for the FA, claims the FA had raised the issue and been told that the roof would not be shut. Either way, the end result was an absolute shambles.

By the time the rain, which had been forecast, started to fall at about 3pm yesterday, it was too late to reverse the decision. Apparently you can't close the roof when it's actually raining. More madness.

According to the literature that was distributed ahead of Euro 2012, it takes just 20 minutes to move the retractable roof into place. Presumably that only applies when it's sunny.

As a result, yesterday's sodden scenes were a major embarrassment to both the Polish FA, who were clearly unprepared for the deluge despite it being widely predicted, and FIFA, whose failure to condemn and criticise the nature of the abandonment merely reinforces the view that world football's governing body has lost its moral authority and ceded any pretence of leadership.

The decision to shift the game back 24 hours to this evening was dictated by the FIFA rulebook. It probably suits Roy Hodgson and his squad, who will not want to have to squeeze another match into an already tightened international schedule, but two groups lose out emphatically.

The first is the clubs who have players involved in today's rematch, and who will not now be reunited with their employees until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Tottenham and Chelsea kick off on Saturday lunchtime - one cannot imagine Andre Villas-Boas or Roberto di Matteo being too impressed with the way things have unfolded.

As ever though, the biggest losers are the supporters, especially the 3,000 or so fans who made the journey from England.

The vast majority had return flights booked for either this morning or this afternoon. Last night, they were faced with a difficult choice. Stick to their initial plans and miss the game they had forked out hundreds of pounds to see or hastily redraw travel plans and incur a massive extra cost to remain in Warsaw for an extra 24 hours.

To make matters worse, by 11pm Polish time last night, there was still no information about whether spectators would be admitted to today's game or whether it would take place behind closed doors.

Maybe the English FA will help to reimburse their costs? Perhaps FIFA will force the Polish FA to pay compensation to all English supporters? On both counts, I wouldn't be holding your breath.

Supporters have been treated with contempt for quite a while now, but even by football's shoddy standards, last night's developments marked a new low.

The lack of information being passed to the crowd was unacceptable. A good 45 minutes before kick off, Hodgson and the rest of the English coaching staff trudged on to the sodden turf, rolled a few balls into the puddles and immediately instructed England's goalkeepers to abort their warm-up.

Poland's players carried on a bit longer, but even they gave up the ghost when the referee and his fellow officials conducted a hasty pitch inspection.

Was anyone informed about this? Not even a whisper, with the scheduled kick-off time coming and going without any updates.

Eventually, an announcement flashed on the big screens to say a second inspection had been scheduled for 9.45pm local time (45 minutes after the scheduled kick-off), but Twitter and other social networking sites were already buzzing with suggestions the England squad were changed into their tracksuits and preparing to board their team coach.

The second inspection lasted a matter of seconds - yet it was still another half-an-hour before anything was confirmed. And even then, the rest of the world knew via Twitter before anyone in the stadium received formal confirmation.

Eventually, at about 10.05pm, a cursory announcement was made. Yet there was no information about the details of today's game. The silence was deafening, and piled insult upon injury.

It was all rather reminiscent of that classic Likely Lads episode, when Bob and Terry attempted to avoid the result of an England game that was abandonment because of rainfall.

England F... was the headline on that occasion. Flooded out. This time around, though, it was hard to find anyone laughing.