Abandoned My First Game

Evening kick off.

Club mentioned not wanting to turn the lights on till they needed to. Makes sense, they might be expensive.

Lights come on as the sun begins to set. Flood lights on both corner flags of one side of the pitch don't come on. Home side go 2 down. That's when I hear the manager losing his mind about how dark and dangerous it is. Home keeper starts telling me he can't see a thing and he's terrified for his life.

Lights won't work. 35mins played. Away manager is obviously irate. 2 hours of travel.

People offer to put their cars full beam on the pitch. We try it, it is a shambles.

Home manager is delighted.

I had to abandon.

Cheeky gits tried giving me half fee for a postponed game. So have had to get the league involved (I'm getting full fee).

Well done, it has been abandon due to the fault of the Home team have failing floodlights, so you are entitled to your full fee.

Depending on the league, they could be fined for an abandoned match and forced to replay. Or the match result may be awarded, if the match has not effect on promotion/relegation.

I've only ever abandoned one match for a wet pitch which turned into a swimming pool at half time owing to biblical rain

Never had the misfortune to have to abandon a game myself but it looks like you handled this mostly in the correct way.

I'd argue that attempting to play under the lights of vehicles was probably not even worth attempting, which sounds like you found out.


There's some useful guidance here on how to handle and manage floodlight failures.

The away team have a chance to win the league.

But apparently this is the second game they've travelled to and has been abandoned and they have a lot of games to play.

There's definitely a team I can think of around me that are famous for having dodgy lights that work much consistently when the team is winning for some reason...

OldNavyRef said:

The away team have a chance to win the league.

But apparently this is the second game they've travelled to and has been abandoned and they have a lot of games to play.

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Sounds like you handled it well Squid-chops!!

I'm a bit disappointed in both teams and their coaches though. I'm sure they could have found a way to blame you for the abandonment if they'd really tried ...

Kes said:

Sounds like you handled it well Squid-chops!!

I'm a bit disappointed in both teams and their coaches though. I'm sure they could have found a way to blame you for the abandonment if they'd really tried ...

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Home manager was too delighted. He was constantly saying the game needs to be called off before 70 minutes (it was called off at 35). He knew exactly what was up.

Away team were a university, so we're very professional and we're just annoyed at the journey.

I've had a couple, one that eventually finished at after 11pm. They wouldn't come on at the start so the game was late starting, they then went off twice during the game. I'd made the decision, and communicated it to everyone, that if they went off again I'd be abandoning but thankfully they stayed on.

The other had to be abandoned. The lights went off during a promising attack, the away team were adamant that they had scored but as it was complete darkness due to a local power outage they were obviously not getting the outcome they wanted. The score was goalless and both teams seemed to be happy to call it a night so I wasn't going to disappoint them.

I can understand why clubs want to leave it as late as possible to turn the lights on given current electricity costs, but there is an argument to say they should at least try turning them on before they are needed. If they don't come on it is then pretty pointless starting the game. Certainly at senior levels, such as step 6 and above, they should probably be on from kick off, even at the brightest part of the season they are going to be needed very soon into the game.

Sounds like it could be the work of one of those betting syndicates!