Merthyr Town v Bridgwater Town

The pitch is under water at present. Dry weather forecast tomorrow but will the game survive??

Tim Drummond wrote:The pitch is under water at present. Dry weather forecast tomorrow but will the game survive??

Perhaps they could extend the season to next September...or find a way to bridge out the water before the players get haemorrhoid strains from sitting about with the fixture pile up....boz

Merthyr chairman is appealing to fans to get to the Park at 9am tomorrow to fork the pitch etc in a bid to get the ground playable. If the game doesn't go ahead, it's going to be a blow to the play-off challenge, I think, with so many games to fulfil at the end of the season.

Dont know about forking there is two to three inches of snow about here this morning, better bring some shovels as well.

I doubt if the game will be on, two to three of snow down here in Abergavenny and still snowing.

gutted, this was going to be my 1st MTFC game, really hope it go's ahead. any info yet guys??

It will be difficult for us and a nightmare for Bridgwater if the game is off. Fingers crossed!

Just announced on Club's Twitter feed that game postponed.

Changed my opinion on the 3G pitch now, it MUST come in, sooner the better!

The game was an unlikely starter anyway but at 3am the snow started falling- end of hopes!
The 3G pitch will come if the club get the funding and we will know in April.
Let's hope Merthyr v Clevedon goes ahead on Wednesday.

Bridgwater face 15 games up to the end of April.
Anyway, postponed games have already been re-arranged up to date. Any postponement would presumably only reflect today's fixtures. But then it would probably affect the scheduled play-off dates. I very much doubt the season will be extended by the SL.
Club have to re-arrange postponed games within a certain time anyway.

The scheduled last day of what the Americans would call the regular season is Saturday 27th April, with the following midweek reserved for the play-off 'semi-finals' and the play off final on Bank Holiday Monday 6th May.

Unless there's some particular reason for not having games on Saturday 4th May, then on the face of it you'd think at the very least they could allow clubs who are unlikely be involved in the play-offs to arrange games up to Saturday 4th May. Although - hopefully! - that wouldn't benefit us.

But I suppose they'd argue that 'unlikely' is not good enough, and that clubs even as far down as next to bottom could still mathematically achieve a play-off place.

My only other suggestion would be to have the play-off semi-finals on Saturday 4th May, with the final still on the Monday. Not ideal, but at least it would free up an extra midweek date in the Tuesday/Wednesday of that week.

cliffyboy Today at 9:35 am
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Changed my opinion on the 3G pitch now, it MUST come in, sooner the better!


Cannot see how a 3 G pitch will make a differnce if there is 6 inches of snow on it

scamp wrote:

Cannot see how a 3 G pitch will make a differnce if there is 6 inches of snow on it

There's something here of interest on the Forfar Athletic website.

http://www.forfarathletic.co.uk/index.php?option=com_flexicontent&view=items&cid=6%3Anews&id=844%3Aweather-and-the-3g-pitch&Itemid=27

There's also this from Maidstone United:

http://maidstoneunited.blogspot.co.uk/

But it does say elsewhere on Maidstone's website that they've had to call one match off this season due to 'heavy snow', so there is a limit to what an artificial pitch can cope with in being playable in all weathers. It's also not much use in preventing matches being called off due to fog...

I'm not sure whether it's easier or not to clear snow off an articial pitch compared to grass, and either way you need somewhere to put the snow when it's been cleared off, plus there's still the condition of the terracing and access roads to be taken into account.

I don't think the club would normally have the manpower anyway to clear a lot of snow off the pitch. And, yes, if the terraces are snow-bound, games cannot be played because of health and safety issues.
Also, if a game went ahead on a 3G pitch in really wet weather, the gate would probably be down because lots of people would not venture out.
Wrexham sent a team to play Merthyr Tydfil a few years ago to try and boost funds. The weather was shocking and normally the match would not have been played. I think the gate was 189.
But a 3G pitch is still the way ahead for Merthyr judging by the fairly poor condition of the present pitch which is not conducive to good football.