How strange a day before a local derby?

Rochdale's League One game against local rivals Wigan on Tuesday has been postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

A local referee inspected the Crown Oil Arena pitch on Monday but a succession of wet days left the surface unfit.

In a statement, Rochdale said they had investigated reversing the fixture, meaning they would face Wigan at the DW Stadium twice this season, and playing the game elsewhere.

However, the plans were unsuccessful, meaning the game had to be called off.

No new date has yet been set for the game to be played.

I was working at the stadium last week and weekend. The pitch is a mess, I think they are struggling with it. Surprising as my Rochdale supporting mates reckon it'd been bang on upto Christmas.

It doesn't seem too long ago that there was film footage of our Groundsman trying to paint a touchline on a puddle before a FA Cup match against Liverpool. I'm so glad that our on and off-field success since then has enabled us to improve such facilities.

And neither side have started playing rugby league yet!

Season starts this week. They’ll have played friendlies no doubt.

Lord Beamish wrote:It doesn't seem too long ago that there was film footage of our Groundsman trying to paint a touchline on a puddle before a FA Cup match against Liverpool. I'm so glad that our on and off-field success since then has enabled us to improve such facilities.

That was the cup match against Liverpool in 2005. Just before that we'd played against Leicester on NYD when the pitch was underwater. It was abandoned after less than 20 mins but it knackered the pitch for the rest of the season.

Do they still play rugby at Spotland? If so, that won't help. Swansea have similar and their pitch looked a mess the other week.

Have a couple of mates who are Dale fans.
Pitch is in a real state according to them, after one game which they said it should have been abandoned due to the rain and it just turned into a mud bath.
Its not recovered.
Think its always been a problem with drainage, our last game of the 4th division championship season was actually played after the last official weekend due to games being postponed at Spotland.

Was talking to Dale fans last night.
They were concerned about the backlog of home matches building up, and wondering whether the pitch would be fit for next week's cup replay against Millwall.
They've no chance of getting out of the bottom 4 if they can't get home fixtures in.

This was the pitch a couple of weekends ago

Jeffbfc wrote:our last game of the 4th division championship season was actually played after the last official weekend due to games being postponed at Spotland.

It was called off at Easter and then again two days after the York game. I'm not sure but I think they were both late calls, I certainly got there at least one of the two.

Just wondering whether Blackpool's pitch is in a sorry state again. Noticed the last home game versus Charlton was called off but there were local amateur games that went ahead. It was the game where tribute was to be shown for club legend,Jimmy Armfield. Did the Oystons suspect something more sinister afoot or was it genuinely unplayable?

I know a guy that works at the stadium, groundsman got sacked last week but he said people there reckoned corners were cut laying the pitch and he was bit unlucky