Blackburn Rovers’ match against Sheffield on Wednesday was called off with 30 minutes remaining due to flooding on the pitch at Ewood Park. When the championship game was suspended in the second half, Yuki Ohashi’s opening goal gave the host team a one-point lead. Rain began to fall heavily, making the pitch unplayable and players from both groups being ordered off the field.
After a delay of several minutes, the referee returned to test the bounce of the ball. He soon realized that the moment the ball landed on the flooded playing surface, it would stop and it would be impossible to continue the game. In the end, the match was canceled after the stadium announcer confirmed the decision.
It is the second time in recent weeks that a match at Ewood Park has been called off due to a flooded pitch. Earlier this season, Blackburn were leading Ipswich Town by one point when the game was stopped with 10 minutes remaining.
In that scenario, the match was replayed in its entirety, with the Tractor Boys attacking late and salvaging a dramatic draw in the rescheduled match. Blackburn had hoped to win, but the EFL ruled that a full replay was the only logical course of action.
Given the precedent already set, it seems likely that Saturday’s abandoned match will also need to be rescheduled.
After the Ipswich game was called off, Blackburn’s ground manager Trevor Wilkin explained that the pitch simply could not withstand the amount of water it had absorbed.
“My view on the Ipswich game is we just have to throw our hands up and say the weather beat us. It’s a good opportunity to say that. I know there’s going to be a lot of scaremongering,” Wilkin said in an interview on Rovers TV.
“This game had nothing to do with the river, it was just the precipitation. On Saturday morning Lindsay Talbot and I arrived and checked out the river and river drainage.
“It was running perfectly fine. I had no problems. As the days went on, I got heavier and heavier. I was so saturated that I physically couldn’t take in any more water.”
“We got the rainfall stats for the next day and we had over 77 million, which is over 3 inches, so when you imagine 3 inches of water falling across the pitch, that’s a lot of water.
“You can’t hide the fact that the pitch is old. The current pitch is 36 years old, so the infrastructure is old, the drainage is old, but that’s not relevant to the Ipswich game. The facts are the facts. We couldn’t pump that much water.”
Wednesday’s match against Blackburn was not the only Championship game to be called off on Saturday afternoon. Earlier in the day, Charlton Athletic’s match against Portsmouth was called off due to a medical emergency in the crowd.
Sadly, the Addicks later confirmed that the person in question died after being taken to hospital.
