Head of WAFL Competitions Luke Sanders says grounds will be monitored over the coming week after several ovals were reduced to giant puddles amid torrential rainfall.
Ovals across Perth including Revo Fitness Centre and Sullivan Logistics Stadium were among some of the stadiums to have its green pristine turf turned into swampy mud patches.
As heavy rain continued to pelt down across the Perth region, many clashes were reduced to scrappy slogs with the poor ground conditions doing no favours to the players.
Speaking on Sports Breakfast, Sanders attributes these poor ground conditions to numerous factors, including the volume of rain and draiange at each of the venues.
“The grounds are managed by the clubs and the councils and their turf contractors,” he said.
“The volume of rain that happened over the weekend in such a short amount of time and combined with a lot of other factors, which is traffic on the oval, the density of organic matter that’s in the venues at the moment, and probably the drainage issues are the huge problems.
“Week to week, we’ve got to monitor that, but I was looking at all the footage and all the cameras at venues on the weekend, and no ground held up under that sort of volume of rain.
“There are interesting conditions when you’ve got puddles on ovals, but we’ll continue to work with councils and turf contractors as to the best way to prepare those ovals with such an increase of traffic on them at the moment.”
There are concerns these grounds may suffer a similar fate this weekend with heavy rain forecast on Wednesday through to Saturday.
Saturday, which is when most games are held, is expected to receive the heaviest rainfall before clearing up on Sunday.
Looking into the final round of the WAFL regular season, there are concerns some grounds may suffer a similar fate to last weekend.
Concerns especially lie with Sullivan Logistics Stadium which hosts two days of matches as both tenants Subiaco and East Perth are fixtured to play home games.
Sanders says he will work with both clubs and their turf contractors through this fixture ‘anomaly’ and concerns with the ground conditions.
“It’s just the way the fixture rolled out, unfortunately based on all the other different machinations that go into the fixture build,” he said.
“I think that the oval will drain well and dry during the week. It’ll come down to how much volume of water falls on the ground between Friday and Saturday and can we do anything more remedial in the meantime.”
He also says the WAFL will continue to assess the venue and situation over the coming week and make a call then.
“You either play there or you play at another WAFL venue which is highly likely to be in the same position as what Leederville will be in,” said Sanders.
“There’s other factors in relation to Subi and East Perth having home games and commercial arrangements and sponsor functions and other bits and pieces.
“Player safety is one and a lot of other factors to go into deciding whether your postpone or move matches the football.
“We’ll be in consultation with both the clubs and ourselves to determine the viability of that ground but at this stage we move on as we’re going to plan to play there just like we would for any other match day or weekend.”
IMAGE: The West Australian