LONDON, England (AFP) — Britain’s harshest winter for decades continued to disrupt sports schedules yesterday as yet more fixtures were postponed because of freezing conditions.

With snow and ice making it treacherous for many people throughout Britain to get to work, officials in several sports announced the unusually early abandonment of weekend matches and races.

Football’s Scottish Cup has been hard hit. Six of the weekend’s 16 ties, including Morton’s match against Celtic, have fallen victim to the weather and more are expected to follow.

In England, none of this weekend’s Premier League football matches have yet been postponed.

Undersoil heating at top-flight grounds means pitches are now able to withstand conditions that would have once made them unplayable and Birmingham said Thursday they were “extremely confident” their match against champions Manchester United on Saturday would go ahead.

But this week has already seen the scheduled League Cup semi-final ties between Premier League teams Blackburn and Aston Villa and Manchester City and Manchester United postponed because of concerns the conditions would make it hard for fans to get to the grounds and back home safely.

Similar issues have already forced the postponement of several of this weekend’s lower league football matches and could yet affect Premier League games as well.

Safety concerns were behind Thursday’s announcement by London-based Harlequins that their English Premiership rugby union match at home to Leeds on Saturday was being postponed because of fears supporters, players and staff would be at risk “due to the icy conditions of the stadium concourse and the surrounding area”.

Saturday’s Premiership matches between Sale and Saracens and Bath and Northampton, as well as Sunday’s clash between Newcastle and Gloucester, had already been called off.

Horse racing has been badly affected by the cold snap, with no National Hunt (jumps) meetings set to take place in Britain until Tuesday at the earliest.

Artificial, ‘all-weather’, tracks have also fallen victim to the conditions after Thursday’s meetings at the south of London courses of Lingfield and Kempton were both abandoned due to a lack of ambulances.

These are normally provided by the state-run National Health Service but, with much of Britain trying to ward off the effects of sub-zero temperatures, horse racing has fallen down ambulance chief’s list of priorities.

“It’s such a shame as the course is perfectly raceable,” said Kempton clerk of the course Barney Clifford.

Even cricket, England’s national summer sport, did not escape the cold on Thursday with south coast county Sussex abandoning a ceremony to mark the demolition of the Gilligan Stand at their Hove headquarters ground because of the weather.