Tuesday, December 1, 2009

...AND MORE RAIN!


“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) American educator and poet.

I arrived for this weeks game at Fawkner Park to the worrying scene of our players examining the pitch with the umpires in tow - never a positive sign.

As I got closer, one of the lads - Craig Nott I believe - said "you may as well turn around and go straight back home". As I got closer to teh pitch I could see that while one end weas fine and ready for play, the other end...basically a whole third of the pitch was under water from a leaking cover or simply w3ater seeping in from underneath the covers.

With a water logged pitch, there was only one place to go - and that was back home. As I drove off the rain started pelting down anyway, so our match was pretty much doomed come what may.

It was all massivley disappointing as I was so much looking forward to playing a game at Fawkner Park this season as it one of my favourite grounds with all the lovely trees that surround it - but that is looking hopeless now.

Later that afternoon, I popped around to our hjome ground to find a number of our lads drinking beer on the balcony in quite respectable sunshine - but their game had been washed out too because of the earlier heavy rains and the questionable state of the pitch.

So it was yet another weekend without play and one more weekend without a bat. My last innings seems like a distant memory now it seems that long ago.

I can appreciate that rain is good for a drought stricken land like Victoria, but I am staggered that two weekends in a row have been lost to rain. How often has that happened in drought addled Melbourne in the last decade?

Next Sunday we take on National yet again - but this time at our Como East ground. It is a pity that this week was rained out as we had our strongest line up in all season. Anyway, I hope we can pull out some surprises for National on our home turf this weekend.

As long as it isn't rained out yet again...

Vic Nicholas
Melbourne
AUSTRALIA