Game off

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It wasnt turned on or turned on properly. It will have been put on a timer to come on for an hour in early hours (where electric is cheaper) and then just used cover for pitch.

Either we trying to save money, its malfunctioned or we just dont want to play the game so manipulated it to not fully defrost the pitch.
Apparently having spoken to a steward the John St side of the pitch is frozen, the lights they use couldn't defrost it, and the U/Soil heating is not working. The SUFC website still doesn't say its off on its front pages, very late to call it off, wouldn't surprise me if SUFC dont get fined or something for this.
 



We need a better explaination. How could the pitch frozen when we have undersoil heating?

Loads of people will have already set off, bought non-refundable train tickets etc
We set off just before 10 and only found it was off when we arrived in Sheffield, with an air temperature of +3 degrees !!
 
I thought the lamps used for grass growth are also used to clear frost? If it was was problem area, why weren’t the lamps used?

But I could be wrong and the heat from them is small 🤷‍♂️

They were.
 
Same old posters going in on the club they supposedly support at every opportunity. What inside knowledge do you have that justifies calling the club tinpot?

Could be any number of causes including a fussy ref!

UTBs
You're a club plant. Or just a plant.

We're a recent premier league club without a game on because of a bit of frost. Someone's fucked up, stop making excuses up.
 
You're genuinely crackers. It should've been on overnight. Leeds have got the game on and it's colder than Sheffield

I think some people are just grasping for things to criticise the club for. I don’t know enough about undersoil heating, are you an expert? Do they run it overnight? Did the club run it overnight already?

It’s just the usual fan fiction nonsense.
 
The official SUFC statement says the undersoil heating was used.

So obvious questions.
1: How can the pitch be frozen if under soil heating is switched on?
2: Apparently it was only a small section of the pitch that was frozen. Why? Did those parts have functioning undersoil heating?
3: Last night temperatures dropped to minus 3…..very cold but nothing particularly rare.
So if we have sub zero temperatures in future….could other matches also be postponed?
4: Are we in danger of having a fixture pile up during our potential promotion run in and what is the club doing about it?

It’s so unprofessional and embarrassing by SUFC.
Email the club and ask them those questions
 
It's odd really that, in this day and age, the decision is down to one person, namely the one highly trained in interpreting the rules of the game, in the face of professional sportsman, equally well trained in caniving/housery.

On a day like today, they are suddenly expected to switch hats and become a health and safety/meteorological expert, capable of determining whether, at 10am, a pitch will be playable two hours later.

Years ago, I can remember turning up for a Sunday League away game in Mansfield. It was a huge park, with, if I recall, 11 games scheduled for that morning. 3 refs deemed the surface playable, the other 8 called their games off.

My point being, maybe it's time for the decision
to be taken away from the ref at Championship level.
Law 5 Laws of the game regarding “referee” and responsibility of
  • that the condition of the field of play or its surrounds or that the weather conditions are such as to allow or not to allow a match to take place
https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/lawsandrules/laws/football-11-11/law-5---the-referee

Although the referee isn’t held liable for any injuries during a match that is played they have a duty to ensure the condition of the field of play and equipment of players are safe. In theory they could have drafted in another local professional referee to inspect the pitch but with the decision made at 10am to call is off it wasn’t much leeway anyway.

Although you rightly say the referee are expected to be health and safety experts, they know what they are looking out for, I would rather it be canned than someone having a career ending injury due to the state of our pitch.

The bit for the bold text with you mentioning years ago, it depends how many if 20+ years ago you will have the referees that at that point would have been in their 60s and were brought up on “lump it” type football but then you would also have the younger referees that are in the 18-20s bracket (maybe older) that have seen the quality of the professional grounds. If you look at the pitch at Bramall lane from 2000 to now it’s unrecognisable, if you got lucky as a referee to do a county cup game you usually ended up at a football league or at least a top end non league club and the difference between park football and their pitch was like sandpaper to velvet.
 
only one company to blame and thats sky if this was 3pm it would have kicked it was -6 at 5 am this morning people some people need to grow the fuck up and stop stamping their feet
 
Anyone have any know how on ticket refunds? Short of just going into the ticket office. Can you just ring them? Booked online but there's no refund option online. None of us can make a rescheduled mid week fixture. Will cost the club thousands this
 
I think some people are just grasping for things to criticise the club for. I don’t know enough about undersoil heating, are you an expert? Do they run it overnight? Did the club run it overnight already?

It’s just the usual fan fiction nonsense.
You would defend the club if they literally put out a post saying 'we forgot to turn it on lol'. Aww bless them, They're only human.

Undersoil heating can be left on for days at a time by the way. If it's on and maintained correctly, it will not allow for a pitch to frost. I can't believe you don't understand this very simple concept.
 



Anyone have any know how on ticket refunds? Short of just going into the ticket office. Can you just ring them? Booked online but there's no refund option online. None of us can make a rescheduled mid week fixture. Will cost the club thousands this
I guess you could try to ring but imagine it will be on the website “in due course”
 
Anyone have any know how on ticket refunds? Short of just going into the ticket office. Can you just ring them? Booked online but there's no refund option online. None of us can make a rescheduled mid week fixture. Will cost the club thousands this

Agree…ticket sales were surprisingly good pre-match.

I was taking 2 potential fans but they can’t go to night matches. We moved all our tickets to the Bramall Lane upper tier.
So I’ve got to go in the ticket office for 2 refunds now.
 
It may have been that it is just a fault and is not working or broke. These things happen.

However, every other club with undersoil heating in the top two divisions (assuming Pompey don't?) had no such issues. So the club has to take full responsibility.

Surely if there was an issue they knew earlier than 10am (they would have known yesterday or first thing this morning you'd assume?) and any problem could have thus seen an earlier inspection at least - alerted the ref. I can only think the club thought the ref would be ok with it, so didn't bother telling him which is a huge gamble. It seems that late, he would have not even planned an inspection (heard nothing about one) and only called it off when he first went out?

Even accepting that things go wrong, to not get the game on is really amateurish and for the decision to be made so late makes it even worse as they will have known they couldn't change the KO time due to regulations/Sky (However crap that is).

It's really poor by the club and reflects badly on a professional operation. Not sure there can be much defence of them. They have a system that probably is only needed for maybe a handful of days out of 365 and the system the club operates failed, making it a waste of time.
 
It's really embarrassing, we are in the top 40 clubs in England and in the top 30 in terms of infrastructure. We have 23 major events to put on every season and freezing conditions are not exactly an unusual occurrence.

Yes the undersoil heating may have failed but had it been on and monitored for a number of days it should have been identified early and things put in place to mitigate this happening.

Lot's of people wanting to defend the club but if undersoil heating can 'easily' break or have blockages as others have said, why don't other top level clubs have games called off when their undersoil heating fails?

If it's failed, which it appears it has, lack of monitoring or back up systems to mitigate the risk at the level we are at is really shit. It's embarrassing and shit.
 
Millwall in December 1995
Think you’re right, thanks. I was wondering this! Rearranged to 13th Feb 1996.

Same match programme used with an updated sheet - don’t have a hard copy but found below image on internet. You got a less blurry image of the front cover I could use for a social post by any chance please Silent Blade - not got this one in my collection…
 

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All part of the wider conspiracy - he's just making it look more realistic, they've already ordered snow so Mansfield gets called, we'll never play again, trying to save money on appearance bonuses.

It's to push COH to build us a new 60,000 seat stadium with a retractable roof so I've heard.
 
Does anyone know of the undersoil heating covers the whole pitch? Or was it just the playing area.
90% of the pitch was fine, it was just the touch line areas on the John Street stand side that was frozen like concrete.

Didn’t Seles ask for the playing area of the pitch to be widened for the new season?
So it makes you wonder if it’s a case of the undersold heating not reaching the far side of the pitch.

It’s a bad error if that’s the case and I doubt United would admit to it.
Anyone dealing with public relations would simply say the undersoil heating was faulty.
 
You would defend the club if they literally put out a post saying 'we forgot to turn it on lol'. Aww bless them, They're only human.

Undersoil heating can be left on for days at a time by the way. If it's on and maintained correctly, it will not allow for a pitch to frost. I can't believe you don't understand this very simple concept.

Has it been confirmed the undersoil heating wasn’t left on?
 
It's really poor by the club and reflects badly on a professional operation. Not sure there can be much defence of them. They have a system that probably is only needed for maybe a handful of days out of 365 and the system the club operates failed, making it a waste of time.

A system which should be designed to function reliably and correctly when only needed for the few days of the year...

It's a disgrace.
 



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