On the 11th August 1991, one of the most bizarre football match postponements occurred. The Worthington Cup (League Cup) tie between Torquay and Portsmouth, scheduled for Wednesday August 11th, was called off because of...a total eclipse of the sun! No the problem wasn't that everything was going to go dark but the police decided that they didn't have the manpower to police both the match and the influx of visitors expected in the area to witness the eclipse. The eclipse couldn't be put off - so the match was!
While a heatwave is turning my local Yorkshire pitches brown, at the other end of the thermometer, the British record for postponements for a single fixture not surprising is for a match in the 'Arctic' north of the country. The Scottish Cup 2nd Round tie between Inverness Thistle and Falkirk was scheduled for 6th January 1979. However, after 29 postponements it was finally played on February 22nd 1979. Falkirk won 4-0 in the 30th attempt to stage the match. Three days later Falkirk lost 1-0 at Dundee in the first attempt to stage the Third Round tie!
In August 2022 the present heatwave caused the postponement of a Football League fixture. In late July/early August 2022, the news was dominated by the weather and sport with record high temperatures and a drought developing over much of the country, while the Commonwealth Games filled the TV screens!
The very successful Commonwealth Games was hosted brilliantly by Birmingham but many events were staged outside of the city including rugby sevens at the Coventry Building Society Arena. The owners of the Arena, Wasps rugby club, had leased the ground to the Commonwealth Games organisers from July 8th to August 14th. The trouble with that was the Football League had decided to start the season early, to accommodate a mid-season break for the World Cup finals in Qatar. Another tenant of the ground - Coventry City FC - needed the Arena to stage their first home Championship match of the season against Rotherham United on Sunday August 7th.
An agreement was reached, to allow that match to be played but the reality proved different. Sixty-five rugby sevens matches were played at the Coventry Building Society Arena in THREE days, so along with the heat, the pitch became unsafe and unplayable. One Coventry official said "When you walk on the pitch, there are craters and divots, which they covered with an awful lot of sand on during the week. But that's all it is, a sand surface." The League match was postponed.
Many serious infectious diseases spread by person to person contact are a thing of the past in this country, although recently various issues have arisen, COVID of course and this week smallpox. There have been times when football matches were postponed to prevent large crowds gathering and spreading disease. Past examples of this were at Blackburn in 1965/66 due to a polio outbreak and Middlesbrough in 1897/98 because of smallpox.
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