The overnight temperature on Thursday night was below the effective range of the USH, switching it on earlier would have had very little if any effect other than costing money. USH is not a magic cure all for wintry weather and hard pitches, it has optimum operating conditions too and once you go outside those conditions you dont get the expected result !
Presumably that is one of the reasons why ICT club officials lobbied the ref hard on Saturday to do a further pitch inspection an hour later .... they wanted the game on and felt the extra hour would have meant the pitch was playable. The referee declined. It is not the club's decision to call the game off, the referee makes that decision, and in this case did so despite the protestations of one of the two clubs involved.
I know its easy to blame ICT for absolutely everything that happens at the TCS and some people are very good at that, myself included (when I feel it is justified), but FFS, they cannot be to blame for weather and the decision of a third party with no connection to the club other than the fact that he will be working on their property* for 90 minutes that day !!!!
[* - i know, different debate, stadium ownership etc !!!]
Understand where you are coming from Scotty and know that ush does not thaw a pitch once the frost was already in the ground so was rather pointless in putting it on in the 1st place.
do you know if the club have left it on for the Ayr game or has it been turned back off.
anyway although our club has to shoulder some of the blame hopefully lessons will have been learnt.