Play on! When clubs haven't let terrible weather stop them

It snowed. We moaned. They played.

Over the last week, snow and bad weather have caused chaos for sport fans. First came the FA Cup fifth round tie between Tottenham and Rochdale. Aside from the VAR controversies, it was, at times, difficult to make out the ball, pitch and players. That was just the start of things to come with fixtures then being cancelled left, right and centre.

Some games went ahead though, and Swedish defender Mikael Lustig found an innovative way to keep the chill off when his team played Greenock Morton in the Scottish Cup.

That came after Scott Brown had turned out in Russia for the club's Europa League match with Zenit St. Petersburg wearing this.

Warning: contains flashing images

Mikael Lustig and Scott Brown aren't the first players who've turned out for their team in not-leaving-the-house weather (albeit both handling it in very different ways). Here's a few examples of other athletes muddling through in pretty hairy conditions...

He did well to find the back of the net without sliding over there. 

Ground staff took to the field in Buffalo with shovels and snow blowers trying to create some order on the pitch during this blizzard, but their efforts were short-lived as the weather worsened during the game.

Colts players banded together to try to scoop out the snow with their boots. Meanwhile, fans in the stands could barely see the players on the field, let alone the ball itself.

Conditions were bleak, but that didn’t dampen the mood as a few Bills players started a snowball fight during a 30-second timeout. The weather also allowed fans to work on their snowman craftsmanship.

A torrential thunderstorm during this Euro 2012 group stage tie caused havoc on and off the pitch at the Donbass Arena in Donetsk. With 52,000 fans there to watch the game, stands in the stadium had to be cleared for safety precautions after lightning lit up the sky.

Sections of the crowd celebrated the game going ahead by dancing and partying throughout the game, despite being completely drenched from head-to-toe.

Ground staff worked tirelessly to drain the pitch and amazingly - after a 50-minute delay - got the teams back out to finish the game (which France won 2-0).

This 1967 game was so cold they labelled it 'The Ice Bowl', external – a frostier version of what we know as the Super Bowl. Temperatures on the day were recorded at -26 degrees Celsius with an average wind chill of -44 degrees Celsius.

Seven members of the half-time band were transported to a nearby hospital for hypothermia, and in fact, their show had to be cancelled because their instruments froze. On top of that, several team players had to hitchhike to the stadium when their cars wouldn’t start.

To add to the trauma, referee Norm Schachter's whistle froze and stuck to his lips when he signalled the start of play. When he attempted to pull the whistle away, it tore the skin from his lips, and the blood from the cut instantly froze.

It was so cold that, at one point, the game announcer said: ”I’m going to take a bite out of my coffee.”

If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine, we don’t know what will.

As if it wasn’t hard enough to drive in harsh weather conditions, these racers were doing it at over 100mph.

The extreme wet weather, external on Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit caused so much chaos that there was a crash involving 13 cars on just the first lap (after British racer David Coulthard spun out). The race was halted for an hour as the debris from the wrecked cars was taken off the track.

After the restart, Mika Hakkinen - the pole position holder - spun out at the first corner and was hit by Johnny Herbert, taking two more cars out of the race. Yet that wasn’t the last bit of drama for the day.

Low visibility on the track caused more collisions with four more cars involved. That included Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari, when he drove straight into the back of Coulthard’s recently repaired McLaren.

The race ended with just eight cars crossing the finish line, while the remaining 14 racers sat in the much drier pits.

This 2014 World Cup qualifier offered its fair share of slips and trips due to the weather, and at 55 minutes the game came to a halt when officials deliberated whether to postpone the match. At this stage the snow had created a blanket over the field, completely concealing the centre circle. 

The game continued, and captain Clint Dempsey grabbed the winning goal in this chilly encounter in Colorado, USA, later saying: "It was difficult out here to see anything."

Last November, this derby in the Bosnian football league was due to be rescheduled because of snow on the pitch, but not everyone wanted the game to be called off. 

Unfortunately Zeljeznicar didn’t have the fluorescent footballs required for snowy conditions, so instead they opted to spray paint their white balls red.

The result left them with numerous sparsely-covered balls that unsurprisingly didn’t convince the Bosnian FA to go ahead with the game, but that was a solid effort from the backroom staff.

10/10 there for passion. Probably a 2/10 for the execution.

When the two teams finally met, Zeljeznicar did win the derby 2-1. The football gods clearly liked their attitude.

Impressive stuff. In the meantime, snow angels anyone?

* This article was originally published on 12 December 2017

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