Extreme weather increasing injury risks and costs, local football clubs say
Grassroots football clubs are warning that climate change is increasing both the risk of injuries and costs as extreme weather hardens pitches or leaves them waterlogged.
Club officials across the country say player welfare concerns are growing as the UK experiences more volatile conditions in the face of global warming.
Speaking to green group Round Our Way, coaches and club officials said many games are now lost to flooding in the winter months, meaning the season is pushed further into summer.
Hot and dry weather is then leaving pitches “like concrete”, leading to injury risks and greater impact on players’ joints, they said.
In response, clubs said they are forced to spend sometimes thousands of pounds to ensure the grounds are safe, creating significant financial pressures on the already-stretched organisations.
Josh Briggs, manger of Kirkoswald Reserves in Cumbria, said: “The season is being pushed further into summer because so many games are lost to flooding in winter, but that means players are training and playing in hotter conditions on increasingly hard pitches.
“We’ve had to rest players complaining of pain in their ankles and knees from the ground being so hard.”
Kirkoswald FC is using specialised mechanical treatments called verti-draining and verti-quaking which break up and improve compacted soil and improve drainage, which is costing thousands and means it cannot afford to carry out much-needed improvements to irrigation on pitches, Mr Briggs said.
Meanwhile, Richard Bower, secretary of Pocklington Town Associated Football Club in Yorkshire, said it was forced to postpone part of annual tournament last year after the pitches became too hard and grass cover too sparse that club officials considered them unsafe, with one player injuring an elbow.
“We’ve invested years and thousands of pounds improving our pitches, but two extremely hot summers virtually wiped out much of that progress,” Mr Bower said.
Lee Good, secretary of the grassroots youth football club CN Sports in Blackpool, said the club introduced a policy to cancel training sessions when temperatures exceed 25C while hard pitches have also become a “real concern”.
“For young players especially, surfaces that are baked hard by heat can present a genuine safety issue,” he said.
Andy Charlesworth, chairman of Tadcaster Albion FC, said they are spending more and more to keep the organisation going amid the challenging conditions.
This includes around £2,000 for running sprinklers 24 hours a day for six weeks last year, an additional £750 on fertiliser every time drought conditions damaged grass growth and around £800 to drain the pitch when it becomes waterlogged.
Mr Charlesworth said: “We’ve gone from worrying about frozen and flooded pitches in winter to trying to keep grass alive in summer,” he said, adding that the pitches were still “rock hard” last year despite the sprinklers.
“It’s like playing football on concrete.”
“Clubs are spending hundreds of pounds more on fertiliser and maintenance just to stay afloat.”
Dr Gaspar Epro, senior lecturer at School of Allied Health and Life Sciences Health and Wellbeing at London South Bank University, said: “This area of research is still developing but if players fall there could be a bigger impact on whichever body part lands on the floor.
“This along with lots of rapid changes in direction and contacts with other players could lead to a greater risk of injuries – or increase the occurrence of specific types of injuries for example on ligaments and tendons.
He added that another increased risk may be seen in older players who tend to play football as a hobby and do not have the opportunity to become conditioned to playing on harder surfaces.
Roger Harding, director of Round Our Way, said: “It’s worrying that so many grassroots clubs are struggling with our weather yo-yoing from extreme rain to extreme heat thanks to climate change.”
Freddie Daley, coordinator of the Clubs Against Floods campaign, said: “The Government should be helping clubs adapt and build resilience before disaster strikes – not just picking up the pieces afterwards.
“That shift from reactive to proactive funding would give clubs the stability to focus on what really matters: growing the game and getting more people playing.”
Published: by Radio NewsHub