By Samuel Ukah

Around this time of year, the SPFL are often forced to announce match postponements due to bad weather. The weekend of December 2^nd 2023 saw 11 SPFL matches called off. Storm Babet which occurred in October this year saw similar results with 8 cancellations the weekend of the storm. Frozen pitches, flooding, and an excess of snow are some reasons for call-offs. Cancellations have left fans, players, and coaches frustrated but with the SPFL only bringing in £41.9 million this year, it could be a long way before we see technological implementations to tackle Scotland’s weather problem.  

Scottish Championship side Ayr United saw their match against Arbroath on the 2^nd of December cancelled due to a frozen pitch. Coach Lee Bullen told me that match cancellations play a role in stunting consistency for his side.

“Ultimately you want to get consistency in your performances, so you want to be playing every Saturday rather than missing games due to weather.”

When a match gets postponed, it has to be rescheduled to be played later in the team’s schedule which can see congestion take place, especially towards the backend of a season. Lee highlighted how this can affect football teams in Scotland.

“It can add up you know, you go from a Saturday – Saturday week to a Saturday – Tuesday – Saturday  with relatively small squads, it can affect you of course… other clubs will have that at times but you just need to get on with it”.

Players have also felt the affects of fixture rescheduling with former Queen of the South player Udoka Chima stating “ It cost us some momentum… For a team that was in our position in the league and with a lot of fixture changes it really did affect our push to stay in that league hence why we got relegated”.

Fans I spoke to shared their frustrations with fixture cancellations as one Aberdeen fan told me that sometimes you can be on your way to a match and then it gets cancelled which is disheartening and time wasting.

So what can be done about the issue? I asked Lee Bullen on his potential solutions on how to keep pitches intact approaching a matchday.  

“I think it is all down to finance and undersoil heating. A lot of clubs in the Premier League have undersoil heating but it is so expensive for a lot of clubs to keep it running and on the go so we understand at our level that at our level some games are going to postponed”.

With Scotland being notorious for its unpredictable weather and football being such a popular sport, the two are bound to clash heads once again in the future. The weather has no favourites as it affects the Premiership teams as well as the lower league sides. With mention of affecting a sides fitness and consistency as well as leaving fans disheartened, hopefully a sustainable solution can be found soon which wont be too cost effective.