Page 4 - Deal Round Up April 2020

No Club Can Beat The
Weather!
By David Richardson

There can’t be many things in football more frustrating than a blank Saturday with no game.
Storm Dennis swept in and wiped out much of the Non-League calendar a few weeks ago.
There were only three games on in the National League’s top tier, while the Southern
League programme was hit hard across Steps 3 and 4.
Fortunately, some of the afternoon’s bigger games – the top two clash in the Isthmian
League between Worthing and Folkestone Invicta along with Slough against Havant in Na-
tional League South – went ahead so there was still some action to report and read about
on Sunday morning!
Postponed games – some at the last minute – causes all sorts of headaches. From all the
planning in the week, often by volunteers, the printed programmes that can’t be sold and
the myriad of other jobs and work required to get a game on that have gone to waste.
At least those games that fell foul of the wind and rain can be rearranged and played later
in the season.
But that’s little consolation for clubs like Tadcaster Albion and Wisbech Town, who were
hit hard by Storm Ciara and again by Dennis in
recent weeks.
They weren’t the only ones, but the pictures of
the damage show the lasting impact of weather.
Wisbech have launched a fundraising campaign
after suffering around £10,000 worth of damage
while the news from Taddy sounds potentially
even more serious. The Step 4 Northern Premier
League club say the damage - at least £42,000 Wisbech Town’s wrecked stand
worth - caused by flooding to their pitch and
clubhouse could see them go out of business after 125 years.
It’s the third time they’ve been hit in recent years after the adjacent River Wharfe burst its
banks leaving the pitch under 1.6 metres of water and the clubhouse ruined.
With no one willing to insure them and their contin-
gency funds used up on last year’s flood – they are
facing a fight for their future.
They too have launched a fundraising campaign and
hope the football family can ride to their rescue.
“We are sticking plasters on sticking plasters but it
has now come to the stage where we are facing the
potential closure of the club,” chairman Andy Char-
lesworth told The NLP.
Tadcaster Albion’s somewhat “It’s a devastating time but we have had a fantastic
waterlogged pitch
response from local businesses and the community
of offers of help. We even had one pensioner give us £100 cash! That’s what this club
means to people.”
The club has six remaining home games to fulfil before the end of April and need to get
close to their £12,000 fundraising target for immediate repair work. The JustGiving page
can be found at: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/savetafc

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