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This has brought about another plea from Stan Ternent to start playing some of our football during the warmer time of the year rather than during the cold winter months. Stan thinks that football fans would much rather be watching games in shirt sleeves than wrapping up on cold days.
I'm not at all sure about this and when we played Millwall at the New Den earlier in the season I recall many of the players were complaining about the high temperatures they had to play in. I can also tell them that although we didn't have to put in 90 minutes of hard effort that afternoon it was less than comfortable sitting in the stand watching in that heat.
I don't believe football is at its best played in high temperatures although I do accept that it is not ideal when we start getting late and unnecessary postponements as we have had this week.
The Bradford game still seems difficult to believe given that ground director Clive Holt only a year ago declared that our pitch was now completely weather proof and only fog could put a game off. The club have remained mysteriously quiet on this one and their ‘we expected the ice to melt overnight' statement takes some believing.
Stan's idea of extending the season could have some value if we were to have a break – but when do we have the break? The British climate (or should I say weather?) has absolutely no pattern to it. If we decided to take the break in late December, early January then the likelihood is that the weather would be at its worst in February. It is just impossible to organise it with any real hope of getting it right. The picture shown was from February last year at Newcastle.
But please be careful about playing too many games in the supposedly warmer months of the year.