The ground staff would have known the game was in doubt, as there was an inspection on Friday (including the Scunthorpe management) and then one scheduled for 10am
If I read it correctly elsewhere, there wasn't even a Saturday morning inspection at Ebsfleet
Interesting. That suggests Scunthorpe didn't chose to tell their fans either during Fruday there was a doubt and an inspection planned?
A decent operations manager would have looked at the forecast and spoken to his staff at the start of the week.
A decent operations manager would have taken steps to ensure that the pitch was covered and used all facilities open to him to get the game on, blowers, covers etc.
That happened at Ebbsfleet.
The person in charge at Charlton failed to take these steps, despite having all the pipe work in place as was so heralded 3 years ago; he had the option of hiring a boiler for about £1500 per day, say total cost of £10k to run. I'm sure @Airman Brown could work out the figures better than me but a small investment to get the game on would be less than money lost in rescheduling for a midweek game with a lower attendance.
This is all down to penny pinching. Well done Tony, you've cost your boss more money. You know how much Roland likes to take and not give. A stitch in time and all that?
Now that is fairer criticism, and pointing a finger in the right direction in terms of who to ask questions of.
TK may well could and should have done something more about it for the reasons you state.
Doesn't mean Roland told him not to hire one, and if your costs for boiler hire are correct it could have been done within the clubs ecisting budget without the need for Roland to dip into his own pockets again.
Someone said to me that the club had all that time when we were in the Premier League to install undersoil heating etc, to be fair they could have but we did have the dome which was highly effective and cheaper, I think.
The thing is that from the Chief Executive down they used to be involved, checking and making sure that the game could go on. As I said in my earlier post, Proper football people who know how to run a football club.
So that might suggest the ground staff as presumably proper football people, don't know what they are doing? I'm sure I've read comments on here that the management team delegate and don't involve themselves in details they dont want to. We can't reasonanly argue that absolutely everything negative is a result of the inexperience of the ownership.
My point is that we used to have a management team that got involved, asked questions and generally managed things properly.
They would have asked the questions and ensured that the equipment was hired in or borrowed (as in the blotter, remember that?)
Now we have a CEO who swans in to the ground for a nice meal less than 3 hours before kick off and a Chief Operating Officer who may be competent in catering but hasn't a scooby about running a football club, delegating then shouting at people when things don't go as expected.
The ground staff would have known the game was in doubt, as there was an inspection on Friday (including the Scunthorpe management) and then one scheduled for 10am
If I read it correctly elsewhere, there wasn't even a Saturday morning inspection at Ebsfleet
Interesting. That suggests Scunthorpe didn't chose to tell their fans either during Fruday there was a doubt and an inspection planned?
Is it for the away team to be putting this out?
For their own fans benefit then yes.
Point being I find it odd that if both clubs knew there was serious doubt on Friday and said nothing publicly that would be strange indeed.
A decent operations manager would have looked at the forecast and spoken to his staff at the start of the week.
A decent operations manager would have taken steps to ensure that the pitch was covered and used all facilities open to him to get the game on, blowers, covers etc.
That happened at Ebbsfleet.
The person in charge at Charlton failed to take these steps, despite having all the pipe work in place as was so heralded 3 years ago; he had the option of hiring a boiler for about £1500 per day, say total cost of £10k to run. I'm sure @Airman Brown could work out the figures better than me but a small investment to get the game on would be less than money lost in rescheduling for a midweek game with a lower attendance.
This is all down to penny pinching. Well done Tony, you've cost your boss more money. You know how much Roland likes to take and not give. A stitch in time and all that?
Now that is fairer criticism, and pointing a finger in the right direction in terms of who to ask questions of.
TK may well could and should have done something more about it for the reasons you state.
Doesn't mean Roland told him not to hire one, and if your costs for boiler hire are correct it could have been done within the clubs ecisting budget without the need for Roland to dip into his own pockets again.
Someone said to me that the club had all that time when we were in the Premier League to install undersoil heating etc, to be fair they could have but we did have the dome which was highly effective and cheaper, I think.
The thing is that from the Chief Executive down they used to be involved, checking and making sure that the game could go on. As I said in my earlier post, Proper football people who know how to run a football club.
So that might suggest the ground staff as presumably proper football people, don't know what they are doing? I'm sure I've read comments on here that the management team delegate and don't involve themselves in details they dont want to. We can't reasonanly argue that absolutely everything negative is a result of the inexperience of the ownership.
My point is that we used to have a management team that got involved, asked questions and generally managed things properly.
They would have asked the questions and ensured that the equipment was hired in or borrowed (as in the blotter, remember that?)
Now we have a CEO who swans in to the ground for a nice meal less than 3 hours before kick off and a Chief Operating Officer who may be competent in catering but hasn't a scooby about running a football club, delegating then shouting at people when things don't go as expected.
Agree a hands on Opeeations Manager would do this. But equally I'd expect and assume our ground staff were proactive too.
I'd like to think they were but unfortunately as the club video suggested it was just that temperatures fell far more than we hoped / could accommodate.
The ground staff would have known the game was in doubt, as there was an inspection on Friday (including the Scunthorpe management) and then one scheduled for 10am
If I read it correctly elsewhere, there wasn't even a Saturday morning inspection at Ebsfleet
Interesting. That suggests Scunthorpe didn't chose to tell their fans either during Fruday there was a doubt and an inspection planned?
Is it for the away team to be putting this out?
For their own fans benefit then yes.
Point being I find it odd that if both clubs knew there was serious doubt on Friday and said nothing publicly that would be strange indeed.
Maybe both teams were conscious of the need for an inspection, but were confident that the game would go ahead, so decided that it wasn't worth causing saying anything?
Despite obviously being disappointed with the postponement, Alexander said it was the right decision.
"We heard on Friday that there was a question mark over the pitch so we had a look at it and it was certainly playable on Friday," Alexander told the Telegraph.
"It had covers on it when I left but I went to the inspection with the referee this morning the pitch had deteriorated overnight.
"It was the right decision with the way the pitch looked.
"You are not in control of it and you have to trust things are done in the right way to get the game on. It is just one of those things."
I'm sure the club could have negotiated a discount price with Andrews I'm exchange for some extra free advertising...
We could have put an article on the OS thanking Andrews for supplying a temporary boiler to ensure we got the game on. Tweets along the same lines, a big screen display and an announcement over the tannoy etc.
I'm sure it wouldn't have been too difficult to negotiate!
You assume that there is goodwill with Andrews to do such deals.
It would have been there is the past but as we've seen with Axis and Data Techniques many sponsors are no longer willing to "help the club out" anymore when their support and assistance isn't valued and many of the people they worked with have left.
As with fans, if you piss people off they aren't as cooperative as before.
Can't say if that is the case with Andrew Sykes or not
That's a fair point. I was working on the assumption that the sponsorship side of the club was run properly, which we know it's not.
Am I right in saying the football league don't enforce any penalties on whether or not a match goes ahead? I seem to recall that during the 2013/14 season and our pitch was unplayable for quite a few weeks (when Roland bought us), and there was the potential for the League to enforce a punishment if the situation wasn't improved.
So as far as Charlton are concerned, the only negative to the situation is the decrease in sales associated with a rescheduled (most likely mid-week evening.) fixture? (I know in reality that Feb is quite a congested month for fixtures, and a rescheduled fixture is not needed at all - with our luck the fatigue is going to exasperate our injury woes as it is.)
There are staff costs for the abandoned match? And uneaten vol-au-vents etc?
Just a guess, but imagine if there had been exactly the same weather conditions at the end of last week - and with the decent sized crowd expected v Millwall - somehow the pitch would still have been perfectly playable come Saturday morning.
When I was at the ticket office last Saturday, I saw them wheeling back a very large set of heat lamps.
They aren't "heat" lamps as such. They are daylight spectrum grass growing lamps - the idea nicked from Dutch vegetable growers. I'd guess that the latest generation might be LEDs putting out very little heat at all - but that is a guess. This is the Dutch firm that provides ours (and pretty much everyone elses too). sglconcept.com/en/projects/charlton-athletic-fc.html?from=map://
So you are saying that katrien is growing cannabis?
Am I right in saying the football league don't enforce any penalties on whether or not a match goes ahead? I seem to recall that during the 2013/14 season and our pitch was unplayable for quite a few weeks (when Roland bought us), and there was the potential for the League to enforce a punishment if the situation wasn't improved.
So as far as Charlton are concerned, the only negative to the situation is the decrease in sales associated with a rescheduled (most likely mid-week evening.) fixture? (I know in reality that Feb is quite a congested month for fixtures, and a rescheduled fixture is not needed at all - with our luck the fatigue is going to exasperate our injury woes as it is.)
There are staff costs for the abandoned match? And uneaten vol-au-vents etc?
With a bit of luck they'll be chicken and reheated for Perks to devour at the next home game.
Am I right in saying the football league don't enforce any penalties on whether or not a match goes ahead? I seem to recall that during the 2013/14 season and our pitch was unplayable for quite a few weeks (when Roland bought us), and there was the potential for the League to enforce a punishment if the situation wasn't improved.
So as far as Charlton are concerned, the only negative to the situation is the decrease in sales associated with a rescheduled (most likely mid-week evening.) fixture? (I know in reality that Feb is quite a congested month for fixtures, and a rescheduled fixture is not needed at all - with our luck the fatigue is going to exasperate our injury woes as it is.)
There are staff costs for the abandoned match? And uneaten vol-au-vents etc?
Who said they were uneaten? Sue would have all day to minesweep.
On the face if it but we don't know what the full background is, could be the final straw that has broken the camels back however it's clear that the Southend Chairman wanted the game on; have I missed the Douchbag's take on our postponement?
Free pass at an employment tribunal that - you can't dismiss someone (who has been employed for more than two years) outside a formal process and you certainly can't tell the media you've done it.
Our Groundsman said the temperatures had been -5 every night this week & the frost mats are only effective to -4.
we've lost far more in revenue than the cost of hiring a boiler, so it was deliberate or incompetence, end of.
The game being called off also has an impact on pubs, restuarants and other nearby local establishments, indeed i visited a pub in Charlton today who bring in extra staff on a matchday as well as making sure they have enough beer and food in place. The pub took a hit. The pub was empty due to the game being called off.
It's a shame that the game had to be called off, as has been mentioned already, a bit of common sense and forward plannng with some minor investment would maybe have prevented this from happening.
They should have put a poxy warning out about it potentially being off and what time the inspection was , so us customers could have put contingency plans in place . Instead by the time I found out , grandad and nanny had been told no the kids are going footy so they won't be with you today etc Still that would have required the thinking outside of the box for a small 4 year old and our powers that be aren't capable of that . Fucktards of the highest order
I went to the Ebbsfleet game yesterday, and apart from the pitch being a bit slippery in places,otherwise it was perfectly fine. I genuinely don't understand how their surface could be playable, but the pitch at The Valley could not be made ready, given weather which has been fairly consistent in the last week or so. The situation was entirely predictable, wasn't it? I can appreciate that parts of the Valley pitch might be in shadow much more than the ground at Ebbsfleet, but is Charlton Athletic really at the stage where the ground maintenance is not as professional as a non league team less than 15 miles away? Just asking, because, forgive the pun, on the surface, it looks that way.
its a sad state of affairs what we've become, tactically getting matches called off - because thats what we done, we,ve now got a fixture pile up and tbh it doesn't really matter as we will go nowhere whilst this wanker owns us
regarding the unit itself it would likely be a swimming pool type boiler, fitted these before and there around 7-10k a pop plus install charlton would be looking at a cost of about 15k if the pipework was run etc, admittedly not off the shelf but about a 7-10 day delivery. not much for a man thats sold anything of worth at this club.
@northstandsteve because we now have saturday and tuesday games for the next 5 weeks, we haven't got a big enough squad and if shoe was on other foot they would be northern wankers that should of got the game on, the only thing i do commend us on is getting it off early enough so that fans hadnt set off for the game, altough ive been in the position on way to sheff weds when it got called off half way there v annoying.
The game against Southampton that was called off was because the ref felt the linesman might get injured as the out of player areas frozen. The Valley does not get much sun early in the morning so I can believe the pitch in places stayed frozen all day.
regarding the unit itself it would likely be a swimming pool type boiler, fitted these before and there around 7-10k a pop plus install charlton would be looking at a cost of about 15k if the pipework was run etc, admittedly not off the shelf but about a 7-10 day delivery. not much for a man thats sold anything of worth at this club.
So no good in the circumstances.
With the weather in this country rarely getting that cold AND as we found a few years ago after some snow, matches can still be called off if the streets around are dangerous, I can understand the gamble to an extent of not installing the boiler. I imagine the running and maintenance costs of such a system would be steep as well.
Comments
They would have asked the questions and ensured that the equipment was hired in or borrowed (as in the blotter, remember that?)
Now we have a CEO who swans in to the ground for a nice meal less than 3 hours before kick off and a Chief Operating Officer who may be competent in catering but hasn't a scooby about running a football club, delegating then shouting at people when things don't go as expected.
Point being I find it odd that if both clubs knew there was serious doubt on Friday and said nothing publicly that would be strange indeed.
I'd like to think they were but unfortunately as the club video suggested it was just that temperatures fell far more than we hoped / could accommodate.
Annoying to say the least.
Very interesting on the way back though as i am sure some on here remember
Boxing Day, D'urso Southampton?
70 mile plus round trip for nothing for me. Others travelled a lot further
http://www.scunthorpetelegraph.co.uk/graham-alexander-says-it-was-right-decision-to-postpone-scunthorpe-game-against-charlton/story-30076163-detail/story.html
Shame really.
Seems harsh
Suggests the chairman's a nut.
Therefore, it is 100% clear the game was massively in doubt, unless a form of heating was used.
It's as clear as day that Charlton did not want the game to go ahead and/or someone/some people at the club are total incompetents.
We've lost far more in revenue than the cost of hiring a boiler, so it was deliberate or incompetence, end of.
It's a shame that the game had to be called off, as has been mentioned already, a bit of common sense and forward plannng with some minor investment would maybe have prevented this from happening.
http://www.pitchheatinglimited.com/page4.php
it wouldn't have been a Baxi combi boiler that was needed or one available for hire at short notice.
Instead by the time I found out , grandad and nanny had been told no the kids are going footy so they won't be with you today etc
Still that would have required the thinking outside of the box for a small 4 year old and our powers that be aren't capable of that .
Fucktards of the highest order
With the weather in this country rarely getting that cold AND as we found a few years ago after some snow, matches can still be called off if the streets around are dangerous, I can understand the gamble to an extent of not installing the boiler. I imagine the running and maintenance costs of such a system would be steep as well.