19 Mar 2009(Thu)

March 17, 2009: They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that was certainly the case from the Yamagata-Nagoya game last weekend.

The steady snowfall, the orange ball; you could feel the winter cold just from looking at the photos on the J.League website.

So much so that the images make you want to stamp your feet on the concrete terracing and blow into your hands to keep warm, even though you are reading the article in a rather different climate.

While these may be particularly severe conditions for Japan, as they play their football through the heat and the humidity of the summer season, it is far from unusual in other parts of the world.

Clubs have found all kinds of ways to keep their fixture list in tact, including the installation of underground heating to keep out the overnight frost, or even by covering the pitch with a huge, plastic balloon.

A cheaper substitute cover was a thick layer of straw, and anyone who owns the brilliant triple-DVD of BBC TV's iconic "Match of the Day" programme will see some highlights of games at smaller clubs were the straw has been cleared and surrounds the pitch, which has received just enough protection for the game to go on. Great memories of a bygone era.

Perhaps my favourite snow tale, though, concerns growing up as a Halifax Town supporter and making regular visits to The Shay in the lower reaches of the English league.

Halifax had a big game one Saturday afternoon, at the end of a heavy week's snowfall, and on Friday the club contacted the local newspaper to ask for help from supporters.

The club said they had bought 100 shovels -- worth more than the centre forward at the time -- and appealed for fans to come to the ground on the Saturday morning and clear the snow, ready for the traditional 3pm kick-off. The "payment" would be a free ticket into the game.

Well, they had no trouble attracting 100 fans on the Saturday morning, and the work was completed quickly.

Happy with their efforts, the groundstaff supervisors went down the tunnel and into the clubhouse for a tea break, leaving the 100 fans outside on the pitch with three hours to kill to kick-off.

One of the more enterprising youths, however, worked out that the price of a new shovel was considerably more than a ticket to get into the match -- and when the groundstaff reappeared from their tea break 10 minutes later, the snow-clearers and the 100 new shovels had disappeared!

It's true what they: One picture is worth 1,000 words -- or 100 shovels in this case.

ends