How many clubs have undersoil heating?

[Satchmo Distel]

Have the days now gone where Football Focus would list Matches Still On rather than Matches Off?

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Have the days now gone where Football Focus would list Matches Still On rather than Matches Off?

Pitch covers are where it's at these days, well at our level at least. They are good to about minus 10 C apparently.

I believe we once installed the piping for under soil heating but the costs of buying the boiler and running it were prohibitive for the financial gain we'd have from not postponing games*.

We have very few games called off for a frozen pitch these days - those we have called off for that reason since we got the covers have been because they haven't covered the pitch in time.

* the one time it certainly would have been financially beneficial was when we called off a cup replay against Scunthorpe late on, which due to timing (in the run up to Christmas with few games around) was going to be broadcast on Sky TV, Five Live and BBC highlights, each of which was worth a five figure sum. I think this was before (and might have been the prompt for) installing the pipe work.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I thought that most games were called off because the terraces or the streets nearby were unsafe - and not necessarily the pitch.

[Lang Spoon]

Why the hell has it taken this long for pitch over to be a thing? I guess we aren’t talking standard tarp. More than one club (including Raith I fear) has scorched their pitch with the old undersoil.

[Giggler]

Bolton fans used to lord it over us because of the undersoil at Burnden Park. Imagine that - a club with a supermarket jutting into one terrace claiming superiority over your club.

Our postponement yesterday was a farce. The referee called it without any consultation with club officials or those from Wimbledon. By 2pm, the pitch was perfectly playable and the fact I walked from my house to the town centre for a pint meant the surrounding streets would have been fine too.

[JVL]

I thought that most games were called off because the terraces or the streets nearby were unsafe - and not necessarily the pitch.

The uncovered terraces and seating areas in Sandhausen were all cordoned off yesterday due to the snow and slippery conditions, and apparently there were some security concerns in Kaiserslautern: the ground is on top of the hill next to the station and the roads and footpaths are all pretty steep. The Ingolstadt team bus had trouble making it up there and I guess they'd have been kept busy gritting all the access routes to ensure that no-one went flying down the steps after the game.