Rotherham Sunday League seeks help to tackle football fixture backlog

A combination of Storm Ciara two weeks ago and Storm Dennis last weekend has wiped out another glut of Rotherham Sunday League games, bringing the total of matches postponed this season to around 200.

That adds to the headaches of fixture organisers already playing catch-up after the floods in the run-up to Christmas.

Suggestions include clubs switching their home fixtures to pitches more resilient to the weather and the local authority re-opening and re-marking those which have been out of action.

“The amount of matches called off so far amounts to seven full weeks of fixtures,” said Sunday League secretary Mark Pilley, speaking before last weekend's postponements.

“We want the council to open up a few more pitches if possible.

“For instance, in Rawmarsh, Hill 60 has not been used for years. There are two pitches out of action in Rawmarsh because of overuse so there are two pitches for eight teams at the minute.”

League officials' frustrations are shared by the clubs, with champions Joker FC putting out a Tweet over the weekend about the lack of access to artificial pitches at schools which are locked at weekends.

Apart from league fixtures, the cup competitions are also running behind schedule and they will soon have to take priority.

“Unfortunately our main priority is getting cup games in after the next couple of weeks because we have set dates for the finals and we have to get semi-finals played before those dates or everything else gets thrown out,” said Mark.

“All our finals are at the New York Stadium on May 17. The Phoenix ground at Brinsworth is booked for April 5, 19 and 26 for our Sunday semi-finals and the last 16 ties are on March 1.

“From March 1, it looks like any games that are postponed in the cup will have to be rolled to the following week just to get them in. 

“It's not just the weather at the minute, it's the drying out of the pitches. It's going to take weeks. It's hard to mark them because if you put a tractor on a pitch then it will sink in. It's hard to do anything.”