A&H

Winter Break

Should the football season start earlier?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 42.9%
  • No

    Votes: 7 50.0%
  • I can swim, I don't Care

    Votes: 1 7.1%

  • Total voters
    14

DB

Referee, Observer, Mentor, Player
Level 5 Referee
I'm not sure if this has been covered in this forum lately, I've seen a few posts regarding the concept. It's also quite a hot topic on the Cornish Soccer Forum.

Do you think it's time that the football season started early to substitute a summer break with a winter break?
 
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My vote is yes.

The weather has been progressively worse over the last few seasons and has therefore had a massive effect on football matches being played. Pitches are getting trashed and becoming unplayable and even with 3G and 4G pitches being available, the FA do not allow league games to be played on them down here. My clubs fixtures have now been updated for April... 9 games in 19 days. That includes in the space of one week: Saturday, Monday, Friday, Saturday. My club is a small one with just one team. Only 19 players signed on. That's a massive ask for a club like ours and it could mean the difference between us Winning the league (our aim) and falling short of the clubs with more than one team.

The biggest thing down here that people tend to say no for is cricket. My attitude is that you pick your sport, football or cricket. Simple.
 
It's an interesting idea, but not sure it would work in practise.

At grass roots and the like it could probably work, but for the professional game? I'm not convinced
 
It's a bit different for the top end of the game though, they're pitches are repairable and playable every week. We've had so many games off because of watlogged pitches :(
 
True, but there's little we can do about it, other than get ourselves promoted to a level where we officiate teams who have good quality pitches, and not the fields that get shown some white paint every now and then that councils provide.

I guess councils taking better care of their pitches could help in some places, with things like irrigation etc. But who would pay for it?
 
Yeah that's the thing :/ Someone has to stump up the ££'s.
 
At grass roots level no reason why not, at professional level in this country definitely no!

My son's u13 league split into 3 divisions with a smaller number of teams (and obviously fewer games) in each division last summer. As a result the original fixture list run from early September until late February. (a bit early for a league season to plan to finish).

With all the postponements and Christmas break, they only played one game in December and so far only one this year. With the smaller fixture list, no reason why December and January couldn't have been left blank in the first place with the season stretched out from late August into March/April.
 
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One word.

Cricket.

Edit : With another word:

Season
That's what I mean though, people will just have to pick their sport of choice. I'm biased because I can't stand cricket though. Went and watched it once, actually sat watching my hair grow instead. It was more interesting
 
I'm not a cricket person either. Those that do like cricket, love it more than their own children. Nutters that they are.
 
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I love footy and cricket, I do love my kids more than football and cricket, but only just a little bit more! :D Wife doesn't moan when football is on the TV any more, she is more than used to it, however she likes to remind me exactly how much she hates cricket and how boring it is every time I watch it!

The club my son players for owns their land and clubhouse facilities. As well as their adult and youth football teams, they also have an adult cricket team. However they don't play any cricket matches at the club until after their supply league 1st team have finished their season.
 
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Do it for kids football and that may be enough. Less games in the bad period and it might even produce better players. The issue with a break per se is that the intense use continues, and arguably that is the reason why so many pitches get trashed - grass needs recovery time too.

I sound like such a treehugger with that last statement.:rolleyes:
 
You're absolutely right there Mr Treehugger :D:p

Pitches certainly need time to recover, they can't do that in the winter. I never really thought of that in detail
 
My lecturers keep telling me they're looking forward to reading my essays because I come up with a plausible and effective left field argument. It's a knack I have ;)
 
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That's what I mean though, people will just have to pick their sport of choice. I'm biased because I can't stand cricket though. Went and watched it once, actually sat watching my hair grow instead. It was more interesting

It's not always the players but where I am there are numerous teams that share facilities with cricket teams and the pitches overlapping with the cricket being the landlord or the councils setting a date the pitches are available from and not budging from it
 
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That's what I mean though, people will just have to pick their sport of choice. I'm biased because I can't stand cricket though. Went and watched it once, actually sat watching my hair grow instead. It was more interesting

Park pitches often serve both sports, so that would be tricky!
 
I would hate it in the pro game!! nothing better than going over to watch your team play on a nice boxing day! ahhh the busy Christmas schedule ... long may it continue
 
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