 | Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 08:16 28 Nov 2025
Its looking more likely now that tomorrow's weather will be a real test for the current pitch and its protection. The forecast has chopped and changed all week, but it looks to be firming up as quite a wet day at some point. The chances of that wet portion of the day being after the cover is removed is quite high. The game itself could be played in wet conditions.
Following a fairly dry week and considering the cover has been in place for a few days, the pitch should have drained enough to give it a proper chance of dealing with and soaking up a few hours of heavy rain. We just don't get much luck with the timing of the weather. Any other day this week and there'd be no issue at all. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 16:16 26 Nov 2025
The pitch played heavy and slow for at least in the 1st half against Aldershot, following the domes removal earlier in the day. If the manager had any issues, I guess they were based on that. By contrast, the surface seemed fairly decent last night for our faster paced football. Perhaps post dome groundwork is a little more complex than normal? |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 12:44 23 Nov 2025
After watching the game in the Ratcliffe yesterday, I walked past the back corner of the ground and it was easy to see that the usual covers have returned following the passing of the wonderdome. Given the 2 upcoming home fixtures in the next 6 days, and the iffy rain forecast for the week (including today's constant showers), it'll be interesting to see what measures are taken to keep these games on. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 18:54 14 Nov 2025
Current weather conditions are fairly exceptional and it's wild out there, as I'm sure most Rochdale based folk on here would agree. Without covers, or using the recent covers, tomorrow's game would not be going ahead. If the match plays tomorrow as planned, then enormous credit to the club for sorting the new cover arrangements out. I'm sure its neither easy nor low cost to sort out. There'll probably be plenty of other games that don't go ahead due to waterlogged pitches. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 16:31 12 Nov 2025
Something a little off with these calculations.
A pitch area of 7140sqm with 4.3mm of water theoretically sitting on top, gives a volume of 30,702 litres. Using UK gallons, that works out at roughly 6,760 gallons. A bit more than you worked out.
Easy way to work out is for every sqm of pitch, if 10mm falls (as it often does at the moment) then x10 for litres. So on a typical 7000 sqm pitch every 10mm of rain = 70,000 litres.
Tent cover or no tent cover, the ground still has to deal with all awful lot of water. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 13:07 12 Nov 2025
Great news. Should ensure Saturday goes ahead. Hopefully this is a winter solution to the pitch problems and not just a short term rental. It'll not just keep the rain off, it should prevent frozen pitches too. Hopefully the pitch sides will deal well with the high water run off from the pitched cover. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 22:56 11 Nov 2025
Interesting. After overhearing a comment by a senior member of the groundstaff in the Ratcliffe earlier, I did wonder. He was certainly confident about Saturday. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 07:49 11 Nov 2025
Unfortunately there's much more information out there in addition to the Met Office. Plus if you go on the MO app and run through the maps section, the scenario with the stalling front is now clearly showing for Fri/Sat. The app can often be delayed in getting the info correct at 3 or 4 days out. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 22:26 10 Nov 2025
Its very difficult to see how Saturday's game will go ahead. We have pretty much a carbon copy of the weather that we had in the run up to the Scunthorpe match. If nothing has changed regarding pitch protection, it is hard to see a different outcome.
Rain is forecast tomorrow morning and evening, Wednesday afternoon and Thursday is just damp all day if not particularly wet. There's also a chance that a front heading slowly north, stalls over us into Friday and Saturday. If that happens it'll definitely be game over. Hate to be so negative, but this is the reality the club is currently in. |
| Forum
Reply | Update on the pitch
at 12:27 7 Nov 2025
Yeah, at 7 to 8 days out you begin to get a good idea on the 'flavour' of the weather to be expected but not the exact details. Unfortunately, any signal for a break to drier conditions has slowly disappeared over the last few days and late next week and into the following week now looks pretty unsettled and possibly quite grim at times as a battle sets up between cold to our north and warmth to the south. I really hope it doesn't happen but we could get stuck in the middle for a few days. All subject to change of course at this timescale and I'm sure the club are more than aware. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 18:14 5 Nov 2025
Another advantage a tent type setup gives, and this helps get the pitch to a state we can only currently dream of, is that if deployed for a while it would allow the full depth of the pitch to drain out excess water as much as possible. That would give the pitch plenty of capacity to soak up any rainfall that fell following the cover removal. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 13:02 5 Nov 2025
I've got to agree that this is the initial route to go down. All options to stay at the COA have to be exhausted before thinking of moving out. The cost, complexity, logistical nightmare involved in moving is hard to imagine. The upsetting of hundreds of season ticket holders who can't or won't travel elsewhere. Would they be within their rights to ask for refunds.
This tent type cover, expensive I'm sure, will be a quicker, simpler and cheaper option. The covers we have, were clearly a cheaper solution, but they don't suit a pitch that doesn't drain freely. The elevated cover not only keeps the rain off, but also allows air beneath to constantly dry the surface. Something the current covers do not.
I agree that a little bit of civils work would be needed to upgrade drainage to the sides at the main stand and Wilbutts, but its far easier than packing up and shipping out to another ground. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 15:06 4 Nov 2025
Just when you're hoping for a positive outcome, it all goes wrong. This really does flag up problems that need sorting by the club very quickly. I have no idea what the solutions are.
From the club's own update yesterday, the covers went down on Sunday. Yes, we've had rain most days recently, but the only rainfall of any note fell early Saturday morning and even that amounted to less than half an inch. Any other rain with the covers down has been mostly light with the odd heavy burst blowing through pretty quickly. Certainly not enough to escape from the covers onto the pitch.
In effect we've had a bit of rain 3 1/2 days prior to a match, and not managed to get it on. How does that work for the next 4 months, when if anything, the background conditions will only deteriorate?
At least it looks drier for the next home games, but will that be enough?
Some very radical solutions are needed, and needed fast. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 13:09 4 Nov 2025
There's almost definitely a clay layer at some level under the COA. A short stroll onto the grass in Denehurst Park gives enough info about the natural soils. It is wet through this time of year and decent waterproof boots are needed. Interestingly, the article mentions an ash layer. There's a lot of ash tipped in Rochdale from many years ago and this layer may pre date the building of the ground, or it could have been imported as a draining material back before people cared about it's chemical composition. Ash drains brilliantly.
What concerns me is the mention of sand covering the drains. Sand should be nowhere near perforated land drains. Fine materials block the drain holes and water struggles to escape into the drainage system. Drainage pipes should be buried to quite a depth in good clean aggregate. If sand is anywhere it should be in a top soil mix to help that layer drain freely. I don't know if one was added in 2020 but a geo textile layer would also go a long way to prevent blocking of the drainage system by any washed out fines. A proper job all adds to the cost though.
At least this morning's news is positive. The original Sunday,/Monday/Tuesday forecast was clearly wrong and there's been nowhere near as much rain as expected. The good news is that the pitch seems to be draining to some extent and together with a lot of hard work from the groundstaff, we may get a game on.
The problem comes if this match is postponed. The weather has been damp for days, but in no way exceptionally so. Just fairly typical autumn stuff at 150m altitude next to the Pennines. There'll be plenty more weeks like this in the next 4 months. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 10:19 4 Nov 2025
This is a pretty thorough article on how the pitch was made up. Is this the last time such major work was carried out? Or have there been further 'improvements'? There's a few details in here that, from my experience, could cause drainage problems. However, these could have been helped by further work in the last couple of years. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 20:26 3 Nov 2025
I've been a bit of a weather nerd for many years. It just comes in very handy for work. There's loads of info on weather websites and forums, and the Met Office make up a small percentage of what's available. The MO can often get a fair bit wrong even at short timescales.
For me its not about the detail 10 days ahead, but the expected general pattern of weather from a few different sources. From that info alone you can make a reasonable guess at what conditions will be like even over a week away.
If interested, you won't find much better information than on the website netweather.tv and the very knowledgeable folk on their forum.
And yes, there are bits of ex Melissa about. Thankfully there's very little of her left. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 17:21 3 Nov 2025
It must be such a fine balance between leaving covers on and taking them off. The rain since 9 this morning hasn't amounted to much and tomorrow's forecast looks better than it did 24 hrs ago. The wind is blowing strong enough to be drying off surfaces, but with covers down, the pitch won't get that help. Then of course there's more rain due this evening.
Following the club statement it looks likely the match will be off. Not good news, but great to see an early warning.
We then need to look ahead to the next home league games on the 15th and 18th. Through my work I have to keep a very close eye on the likely weather 10 to 15 days ahead in order to help with planning our jobs. As it stands this wet and windy unsettled spell looks to be stuck with us until around next Weds/Thurs. Then there's a signal for a change in the pattern to drier weather at the back end of next week and into the following week. With a bit of luck any drier spell kicks off early enough to get both those games on. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 18:42 2 Nov 2025
I'd suggest that the covers would work under normal conditions, but they don't provide the protection needed to the current pitch.
Agree that covers on today, if they are on, is a negative. Today was a drying day for the surface with decent low humidity levels since late morning. We just don't know.
The covers we have need to be down from now until Tuesday afternoon to give some protection. Unfortunately, the current rain forecast has deteriorated for Tuesday 3 to 4pm onwards when the covers are off. That could of course change.
I mentioned this after Southend, but as long as there's some overlap between covers, and they are not completely watertight, hundreds of litres of water will find a way to relatively small areas of the pitch surface. On a poorly draining pitch, that's a very bad thing.
We are in such a great position right now, it would be a disaster if the all that hard work gets undone. |
| Forum
Reply | Rochdale v Scunthorpe on Tuesday
at 11:16 2 Nov 2025
I'd say that its 50/50 at the moment as to whether this game goes ahead. The only thing that makes those odds better would be less rain than is currently forecast over the next 60 hours.
The problem, not for the first time this season, is not necessarily the rain that is going to fall, but rather what we've already had. Up here in Norden there has only been one dry day since the 19th October. Unfortunately we have a pitch that currently struggles to drain even the slightest amount of water, so accumulated rain days, even if the rain hasn't been that heavy, cause huge problems. The expected 20 to 30mm of rain in the next couple of days isn't going to help at all.
I'm going to guess that the covers are down and have been since at least Friday. The forecast heavy rain early Saturday morning would have made that decision. The problem with the covers however is that, if I remember correctly, last time we were in this position, they hid the real problems until they were removed.
Hopefully, Tuesday's game goes ahead, but the club is going to be praying for long dry periods for the rest of the season. This pitch will be fit to play through evaporation out of the surface as much as drain down into the drainage system. Anything like our usual Pennine winter and there'll be serious disruption ahead.
I'm no expert on covers, but is there such a thing as a full tent like cover? That sort of thing, other than installing a roof, would surely help.
Perhaps I'm being overly negative and that the shortage of communication from the club on the issue is because there is no issue. |
| | MAK
|
Site Scores| Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 0 |
|
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.