THERE'S never been a season quite like it with scores of local football fixtures going under as the rain sweeps down.
John Bullen , outlines the problems facing one local league, the Bolton Combination and during the rest of the week he looks at others as well as Bolton Leisure Services, who are faced with the near impossible task of preparing the pitches. RAIN, rain go away - that's the plea from everyone concerned on our local football scene.
Clubs and leagues have been going through a weekly ritual for the past two months of trying against all odds to get games played but to no avail.
The effects are beginning to have catastrophic consequences with serious talk that cup - and even league - competitions may have to be abandoned this season.
The underlying worry is that this sort of wet winter is becoming not only the norm but worsening each season. With the water table as high as it is only a moderately heavy shower can see pitches left under water.
"It's an absolute nightmare," fumes exasperated Bolton Combination match secretary Fred Morris. "We managed to get just one game played last Saturday in our entire programme. Even that can be a worry as you wonder how much damage they may have done to the pitch and whether playing on it may have put it out of action for weeks even if the rain lays off for a bit.
"If all the games are off this coming Saturday yet again, and the forecast is for rain all week, that will be SEVEN weekends of total washouts that we have had this season. From a fixtures planning point of view we have already gone through the stage of it bordering on the disastrous.
"Normally by this time of year we may have had one bad weekend, if that, but after losing a full weekend's playing programme to the fuel crisis we have now lost six to the weather.
"The thing to bear in mind is that we still have the traditional bad weeks of December and January yet to come. Normally we expect to lose three or four weeks then so we could be in a position where we will have lost ten or twelve playing Saturdays over the course of the season. Where we go then I just don't know. "
"The majority of our teams play on parks pitches and the goalposts are normally taken down at the end of April. When I sat down to plan out the season in the summer I calculated that we needed 22 complete playing days for the league programme and a further eight maximum for the cup competitions making 30 in total.
"We started on September 2 which gave us 33 Saturdays, giving us some leeway. We have now lost seven so that has totally disappeared. Somehow when the light evenings come at the end of March I will have to have teams playing two, maybe three, times a week throughout April. Goodness Knows how we are going to manage it!"
"There is also the additional problem of teams playing in the County Cups which take priority over league commitments. Our Premier Division team Walkden have tried four times to play their home tie against Hindley Green and will try again this Saturday. Kersal Vale and Brindle Heath are still in the Manchester County Cup and they are going through the same thing. All that means is that when they are off it decimates my league playing schedule yet again and the backlog of fixtures is just growing and growing.
"We meet with Bolton Metro Leisure Services at the next Football Forum on December 5th and the first thing I shall be requesting is an extension to the season well into May.
"Obviously they are as frustrated as we are at the moment. The fields are so wet they can't get on to cut and mark them out. So even if it did stop raining they may not be playable in the short term. It's so bad that Little Lever's ground has not been cut this season. It's just so frustrating."
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