Fratton Park in Portsmouth England was drenched recently during a match between Pompey and Wycombe Wanderers. My wife's cousin is a Pompey fan and sent the link to this match. Recalls for me the Timbers match some years back when PGE Park was the locus of a violent weather cell. Thunder and lightning and torrential rain, though not enough to stop the match.
This phenomenon may seem like an adventure to some, but in the realm of football management, it's a terrible problem. Grass pitches can't be maintained adequately during a fall-winter season with torrential rains. For our club, FC77 this became clear about three years ago when we had negotiated the use of a wonderful grass pitch in outer Southeast Portland. The problem was that we had a very high (for a small non-profit) obligation to pay cash for use of the field. Our calculation had been that the use by league teams would generate the revenue for the bulk of the field cost. However torrential rains caused cancellation of many games and the equation no longer worked. Extreme weather events such as the downpour in Portsmouth will kill the traditional field use in the fall and winter.
Futbol, like everything else in the world, is being affected dramatically by real life weather conditions.
As someone said in the comments from Fratton Park, "At least they kept the bar open". Does this feel like the Titanic? At least we can drink as the ship slips into the wash…..
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