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A touch of realism?
Views: 3775
We are in mid-February and have a minimum of 11 more home games (9 league and at least 2 cup) to somehow fit in. The forecast for tomorrow is awful again and, if it turns out to be half accurate, the Maidstone ILC game will be off. Given the awful state of Earlsmead (shades of the old Claremont Road pitch), I can foresee having to play 3 games a week if and when the HB pitch becomes playable on a regular basis again.
Gary and the squad have performed wonders this season but, in the prevailing circumstances, I honestly think it is no longer realistic to hope for a play-off place. Still I suppose where there's life there's hope!
Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Re: A touch of realism?
Views: 3419
The people who are primarily responsible for the fixture pile-up are surely the FA who made the ridiculous decision to increase the league by two clubs. They should either fund all teams having 3G pitches out of their 5.1Bn coffers or decrease league sizes to sensible levels. I hope the Ryman league administrators, along with those of parallel leagues, have been making representations. If not then the individual clubs should make sure that they do.
Re: A touch of realism?
Views: 3438
We're not yet at the 3 games in a week stage, and for example still have to play Witham twice who are worse off than we are in terms of a pile up.
I certainly think we should be getting some money back from Borough for every postponement, as they have obviously chosen to take our money without investing anything at all on the pitch or its upkeep.
SJP can't come quickly enough. The light at the end of the tunnel.
Re: A touch of realism?
Views: 3306
Postponements happen, especially when two sides play their home games on the same pitch during a pretty damp winter - it's going to take its toll. I think any suggestion that Harrow have pocketed the money and don't give a damn about the pitch is at best, pretty uncharitable.. I hardly think that they, in the midst of a relegation scrap, are particularly happy with the state of the surface at the moment either.
Yes its frustrating, and of course we are desperate to get into SJP as soon as we can, it's not that far away now.
Another observation
Views: 3239
I cannot believe that Harrow would deliberately leave the pitch in a worse state for us. They have an outside groundsman, who does a number of other pitches, whereas in years gone by (when they consistently had the best surface in the Division) Harrow had pretty much first call on him – mainly because he played at full-back for them!
Harrow Borough used to run a reserve team and an Under-18s side. Those two teams would probably have had as many fixtures between them as Hendon’s first team, so the pitch usage would not be very different – no more than half a dozen games over nine months. To be honest, Under-18s might just do a little less damage than an adult team, but a reserve team would certainly carve up the surface in the same way as a first team.
Re: Another observation
Views: 3295
I didn't suggest they deliberately left the pitch in a worse state for us - it is clear to me however that they are charging us a significant financial sum and not investing ANY of that sum into the extra care required for the surface that having another team playing on it necessitates.
There have been at least two weekends where Earlsmead has had games called off where almost if not every other game on the list was on, so unless this particular corner of South Harrow has been rainier than the rest of Rymanland, the "it's just been a wet winter" excuse doesn't wash either.
Re: Another observation
Views: 3336
I don't really think it's for us to speculate where Harrow direct the money for the rent. Quite apart from the usage of the pitch, there are a lot of other overheads they need to cover when we are hosting a match. Over 12 months, the amount we pay probably spreads rather thin.
What I will say though is that with us playing Monday evenings, it doesn't give the pitch an awful lot of time for recovery, or to be worked on (especially when wet) following a game on the Saturday afternoon.
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