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Soccer fans left in the lurch by last minute rescheduling

Matches at the women's World Cup yesterday were called off at the last minute and rescheduled after protests from the teams involved, leaving many fans in the lurch.

It means China's crunch Group D game against New Zealand in Tianjin and Australia's equally important showdown with Canada in Chengdu will now take place today.

The move followed a decision by FIFA on Tuesday to push back the Group D clash between Brazil and Denmark and the Group C meeting between Norway and Ghana to today as Typhoon Wipha barrelled toward China.

But the fixture change was contradictory to the practice of playing the group finales together on the same day and sparked complaints to FIFA and the local organizing committee.

Teams said having the final group games on different days would give those sides playing today an unfair advantage as they would know the score of the previous day's game and therefore what result was needed to make the quarter-finals.

FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot said the decision to postpone the games was made "in the early afternoon" and that the teams were informed soon after.

The Australian team said they were only told that the match had been postponed as they prepared to board the bus to the stadium in Chengdu.

FIFA's official statement was issued 10 minutes after the Australia-Canada match was supposed to have started.

Asked about fans, some of whom had traveled from overseas, being left in the lurch, Maingot said they were taken into consideration.

"It is an important point and one we definitely took it into consideration," he said. "The local organizing committee was responsible for refunds or the reissue of tickets."

The China match was expected to attract 60,000 fans.

New Zealander Carolyn Thompson said the postponement had caused all sorts of problems.

"Now we have to decide whether we are going to stay for the game and miss our planes [back to New Zealand]," she said. "We have paid thousands of dollars to come here to watch the matches, so we must decide to either leave now, or pay thousands of dollars by missing our flight and paying for more hotels."
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