Global warming takes hold in freezing Motherwell

EXPERIENCED Scottish football supporters will have choked on their Bovril to hear a Premier League manager stand on a frozen pitch and blame the postponement of his team's match on global warming.

A touch of the greenhouse effect would make the average Saturday afternoon considerably more bearable for those of us who have to rely solely on boiling gravy to keep the body temperature above absolute zero.

Mark McGhee could have chosen a better turn of phrase, but his general thrust was accurate.

As prevailing climatic conditions become more extreme, it's no longer acceptable to claim surprise when the weather takes a turn for the worse and blame the Met Office when the undersoil heating isn't turned up.

Quite why Kilmarnock and Motherwell were unable to thaw their parks in weather conditions far less inclement than the financial ones will probably remain a topic for speculation alone, but plenty of suspicious eyes will be cast in their direction.

Many have been critical of the lateness of these call-offs and understandably so and it is certainly unlikely anyone heading to Rugby Park from Aberdeen had not already set off before realising they had nowhere to go.

But to focus on the short notice misses the point. The nature of the weather that causes the majority of Scotland's postponements is such that it is not until the sun dawns on the morning of the match that ground staff can properly assess how well a pitch has stood up to it, and even if passed playable it will rarely be perfect – nor the conditions in which supporters are asked to sit and, importantly, drive.

The forecasts with which the administrators should be concerned are not those of overnight frost but the longer-term projections of seasonal change.

It is a shame the SFA's brainstorming with their Irish counterparts stretched only to a half-baked bid to host the European championship finals rather than a discussion of managing the change to summer football. Then this would not have happened.

Chris Crighton is the editor of Dons fanzine the Red Final