Dumbarton vs Stirling Albion

[Sons Fan]

Absolute joke if the games off. 

[Clarko_son]

28 minutes ago, headthebaw said:

I reckon Dumbarton have shat it

You lot announced Fotheringham staying and a couple more signings so we left a hose running overnight seems the obvious answer here

[George Parr]

Ouch, that’s embarrassing. 

[TamCarson]

Smart from Stevie, no lynas, plus waiting for a couple of marquee signings not over the line yet. Gives us time to properly prepare for this game.

[lorenzo71]

Although both teams came into this game on a high i think the binos had the upperhand with their signing news and given our reduced squad its not a disaster the game being off.Obviously  a financial hit as midweek will not get such a big crowd.

[BallochSonsFan]

Pitch has taken a fair bit of water yesterday and overnight. It wasn't terrible, but there were a couple of patches that were pretty bad. Not puddles, but as soon as you stood anywhere in those patches then there was water. I was down for a trust board meeting at 12 - at that point there had already been work done on the park and the trust board took forks and we went out to help.

Probably 80% of the pitch was fine. Far side line was good, all 4 corners were fine and the 2 penalty boxes were ok. Pretty much the home half of the pitch was fine. There were 2 areas of concern though. A patch just outside the centre circle in the centre of the river side half. Also a similar sized patch from the edge of the centre circle towards the stand in that river side half of the park. We were forking it and using an industrial aqua vac to get some of the water shifted. Also put sand down. By 1pm when the ref was doing the inspection, I'd have given it a chance of going ahead. Ball didnt have a lot of bounce in it when dropped vertically, but how often does the ball go straight up and down during a game? It was moving across the surface ok. It wouldn't have been a pitch for silky football, but I reckon that with another hour then it would have been absolutely fine to play. Both management teams wanted it go to ahead and made their feelings clear to the ref.

Refs are in a tough position with inspections. They don't want criticism if fans travel to games and they have to abandon a match because of conditions. The primary concern should be player safety and that didnt feel like an unsafe pitch. I've seen us play and finish games in far worse conditions. Unfortunately the ref made the decision that the game couldn't be played. I think it's the wrong one. Pitch was playable for me when he did the inspection and with another hour of work it would have been fine. Heavy? Aye. Bit of sand? Obviously. Not a day for tippy tappy passing. But it's league two for f**k sake. 

Really annoyed that this one was postponed.

[WC Boggs]

Well that's preserved  the status quo.

 

[Dumbarton Rock]

25 minutes ago, BallochSonsFan said:

Pitch has taken a fair bit of water yesterday and overnight. It wasn't terrible, but there were a couple of patches that were pretty bad. Not puddles, but as soon as you stood anywhere in those patches then there was water. I was down for a trust board meeting at 12 - at that point there had already been work done on the park and the trust board took forks and we went out to help.

Probably 80% of the pitch was fine. Far side line was good, all 4 corners were fine and the 2 penalty boxes were ok. Pretty much the home half of the pitch was fine. There were 2 areas of concern though. A patch just outside the centre circle in the centre of the river side half. Also a similar sized patch from the edge of the centre circle towards the stand in that river side half of the park. We were forking it and using an industrial aqua vac to get some of the water shifted. Also put sand down. By 1pm when the ref was doing the inspection, I'd have given it a chance of going ahead. Ball didnt have a lot of bounce in it when dropped vertically, but how often does the ball go straight up and down during a game? It was moving across the surface ok. It wouldn't have been a pitch for silky football, but I reckon that with another hour then it would have been absolutely fine to play. Both management teams wanted it go to ahead and made their feelings clear to the ref.

Refs are in a tough position with inspections. They don't want criticism if fans travel to games and they have to abandon a match because of conditions. The primary concern should be player safety and that didnt feel like an unsafe pitch. I've seen us play and finish games in far worse conditions. Unfortunately the ref made the decision that the game couldn't be played. I think it's the wrong one. Pitch was playable for me when he did the inspection and with another hour of work it would have been fine. Heavy? Aye. Bit of sand? Obviously. Not a day for tippy tappy passing. But it's league two for f**k sake. 

Really annoyed that this one was postponed.

M8 some of them are a total nightmare especially the younger ones. I remember one day we had worked since 8am on it, there was about 5 of us that day and this old ref came out, walked about and came up to me and said good effort groundsman bit soggy and the ballet dancers will hate getting tights muddy but we've played in a lot worse. Young ones as you say throw the ball up and if it doesn't bounce it's a drama and you couldn't even talk to them to fight your corner. Nightmare. 

[WC Boggs]

40 minutes ago, Dumbarton Rock said:

M8 some of them are a total nightmare especially the younger ones. I remember one day we had worked since 8am on it, there was about 5 of us that day and this old ref came out, walked about and came up to me and said good effort groundsman bit soggy and the ballet dancers will hate getting tights muddy but we've played in a lot worse. Young ones as you say throw the ball up and if it doesn't bounce it's a drama and you couldn't even talk to them to fight your corner. Nightmare. 

I think my favourite on that subject was at an amateur game, where we were picking broken glass  and stones out of huge puddles on an obviously unplayable miner's welfare pitch.  The ref started measuring at the goals which totally flummoxed us. Then he declared, pointing. " That crossbar is an inch lower than the other wan, the game's aff."  I laughed, but our team captain was heard to say, "Away ya total clown," before delivering a solid right hook to the fizzer. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be thankfully.

[lorenzo71]

Whatever happened to verti-draining?This hasnt been mentioned on here for a long time.Thats worrying.Vert-draining required ?

[Jan Vojáček]

3 hours ago, The Moonster said:

I went to look for it on our site but it's that shite it's not even there. Not sure if we're still using the previous Univtec website, @Jan Vojáček do you know?

Honestly, I've no idea. It seems to have been a bit of a shitshow getting any form of stream out. Not helped by us barely having any home games. But I'm fairly clueless on the technical side of things unfortunately.

2 minutes ago, lorenzo71 said:

Whatever happened to verti-draining?This hasnt been mentioned on here for a long time.Thats worrying.Vert-draining required ?

Pitch is being verti drained next week I think. That was planned before anything today, but not sure how often it's done or should be done.

[WC Boggs]

23 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

Honestly, I've no idea. It seems to have been a bit of a shitshow getting any form of stream out. Not helped by us barely having any home games. But I'm fairly clueless on the technical side of things unfortunately.

Pitch is being verti drained next week I think. That was planned before anything today, but not sure how often it's done or should be done.

Forks and drainage systems sometimes doesn't end well. Trust me, we found out the hard way at Forthbank.

[pleslie99]

5 hours ago, BallochSonsFan said:

Pitch has taken a fair bit of water yesterday and overnight. It wasn't terrible, but there were a couple of patches that were pretty bad. Not puddles, but as soon as you stood anywhere in those patches then there was water. I was down for a trust board meeting at 12 - at that point there had already been work done on the park and the trust board took forks and we went out to help.

Probably 80% of the pitch was fine. Far side line was good, all 4 corners were fine and the 2 penalty boxes were ok. Pretty much the home half of the pitch was fine. There were 2 areas of concern though. A patch just outside the centre circle in the centre of the river side half. Also a similar sized patch from the edge of the centre circle towards the stand in that river side half of the park. We were forking it and using an industrial aqua vac to get some of the water shifted. Also put sand down. By 1pm when the ref was doing the inspection, I'd have given it a chance of going ahead. Ball didnt have a lot of bounce in it when dropped vertically, but how often does the ball go straight up and down during a game? It was moving across the surface ok. It wouldn't have been a pitch for silky football, but I reckon that with another hour then it would have been absolutely fine to play. Both management teams wanted it go to ahead and made their feelings clear to the ref.

Refs are in a tough position with inspections. They don't want criticism if fans travel to games and they have to abandon a match because of conditions. The primary concern should be player safety and that didnt feel like an unsafe pitch. I've seen us play and finish games in far worse conditions. Unfortunately the ref made the decision that the game couldn't be played. I think it's the wrong one. Pitch was playable for me when he did the inspection and with another hour of work it would have been fine. Heavy? Aye. Bit of sand? Obviously. Not a day for tippy tappy passing. But it's league two for f**k sake. 

Really annoyed that this one was postponed.

Saw this today on twitter. If that's a big pile of sand then there's no way a ref is going to let that play. The ball won't bounce and therefore becomes a player safety issue. Fair enough if it's a small patch but that's a significant area.

It's all very well saying it would be playable an hour later but the ref was asked to check at 1pm, and if its not playable then it's not playable. This is 100% not the refs fault, it's the weather's, it's the fact our groundsman is PT, it's the fact noone was there to deal with the pitch earlier but you can't blame the ref for calling it off. Just to put it another way, long ball drops in that area, 2 players go in looking to win it on the bounce in a 50/50 and the ball dies, both players smash each other and break bones. Who's fault is that for allowing the game to be played? The ref wouldn't ref again in the spfl this season! 

[BallochSonsFan]

13 minutes ago, pleslie99 said:

Saw this today on twitter. If that's a big pile of sand then there's no way a ref is going to let that play. The ball won't bounce and therefore becomes a player safety issue. Fair enough if it's a small patch but that's a significant area.

It's all very well saying it would be playable an hour later but the ref was asked to check at 1pm, and if its not playable then it's not playable. This is 100% not the refs fault, it's the weather's, it's the fact our groundsman is PT, it's the fact noone was there to deal with the pitch earlier but you can't blame the ref for calling it off. Just to put it another way, long ball drops in that area, 2 players go in looking to win it on the bounce in a 50/50 and the ball dies, both players smash each other and break bones. Who's fault is that for allowing the game to be played? The ref wouldn't ref again in the spfl this season! 

Photo is a bit misleading.

There wasn't as much sand as it looks in that picture. It was getting spread out and wouldn't have been that bad had the game gone ahead and the sand had been moved across the wettest part of the pitch. The ref also looked to test the sanded area closest to the far side line. At one point there was 11 of us trying to get the worst areas sorted. That image looks to have been taken after the game had been called off and most of us had gone home.

Park would have been playable by 3pm. Absolutely no doubt. Ref made a very cautious decision.

Edited January 7, 2023 by BallochSonsFan

[headthebaw]

And yet someone at Dumbarton FC contacted the SPFL and requested an inspection

[Binos]

It is boghead after all 

[Bring Back Paddy Flannery]

22 minutes ago, headthebaw said:

And yet someone at Dumbarton FC contacted the SPFL and requested an inspection

Aye. It’s fairly well documented that when the club staff turned up they contacted the SPFL for an inspection. The problem was they didn’t turn up early enough hence why the inspection was left for the matchday referee to conduct. I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make.

[pleslie99]

58 minutes ago, BallochSonsFan said:

Photo is a bit misleading.

There wasn't as much sand as it looks in that picture. It was getting spread out and wouldn't have been that bad had the game gone ahead and the sand had been moved across the wettest part of the pitch. The ref also looked to test the sanded area closest to the far side line. At one point there was 11 of us trying to get the worst areas sorted. That image looks to have been taken after the game had been called off and most of us had gone home.

Park would have been playable by 3pm. Absolutely no doubt. Ref made a very cautious decision.

Cautious maybe. Correct probably. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves and why does our pitch suffer more than others and looks like Troon beach for half the year! We shouldn't be needing to dump tons of sand on it to sort it. It was never that bad in @Dumbarton Rock day, pitch was nearly always immaculate. 

[TamCarson]

The referee called it off, let's move on and focus on potential signings and the Forfar game.

Yeah we were all looking forward to it, yeah we might have had to play without some players, but not like Dumbarton FC called it. By all accounts the manager wanted the game on, part time teams don't ideally want to play midweek with less of a crowd etc.

Mon the Sons 

[headthebaw]

43 minutes ago, Bring Back Paddy Flannery said:

Aye. It’s fairly well documented that when the club staff turned up they contacted the SPFL for an inspection. The problem was they didn’t turn up early enough hence why the inspection was left for the matchday referee to conduct. I’m not entirely sure what point you’re trying to make.

It's clear that a lot of work took place today by ground staff in an attempt to make the pitch playable and yet with 3 hours (or more?) left before kick off the call was made to the SPFL.